The countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) – Serbia, Romania, Poland and Hungary – have reached this year the real gross domestic product (GDP) levels recorded before the pandemic, Erste Group’s report says.
“Four regional economies have already reached the GDP levels from the pre-pandemic period, while Slovenia is close to it,” the banking group’s experts said.
GDP grew by more than 15% in Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary, in Slovakia, the growth was slightly less than 10% compared to the same period last year, while the Czech economy recorded a more moderate recovery of 8.2%.
The rest of the region is still far from the ‘business as usual” situation. The increase in the second quarter of 2021, as estimated, was mainly based on a recovery of household consumption and investments, while net exports performed more unevenly due to higher imports as a result of consumption and investment growth.
“The CEEC region will experience strong economic growth, inflation will persist next year and most of the time, it will remain above the target level, justifying the tightening of monetary policy,” Erste Group’s experts said.
However, the results of such a plan, as they said, are expected mainly from 2022, so the ECC-8 (Serbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) will experience robust economic growth of 5.7% this year, followed by another strong increase of 5% in 2022.
(Novi Magazin, 23.09.2021)
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