Estonia’s Economy Contracts At Record Pace At The End Of 2008

Estonia’s economy contracted at the fastest year on year rate in at least 15 years in the fourth quarterof 2008. Commenting on the news the Estonian Finance Ministry restricted himself to the obvious, “the recession may deepen this year”, he said. The economy shrank an annual 9.4 percent, the second-worst performance in the European Union (after Latvia), following a 3.5 percent year on year contraction in the third quarter. The contraction was 4.2% quarter over quarter. That is 16.8% annualised. Absolutely horrible.

“This is the worst economic crisis in Estonia since Estonian independence” in 1991, Lars Christensen and Violeta Klyviene, analysts at Danske Bank A/S said in an e-mail today. “Nobody can now deny that the crisis in the Baltic economies is at least as bad as the Asia crisis of 1997-1998 or the Argentinean crisis of 2001-2002.”

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 6:13 pm and is filed under A Fistful Of Euros, Economics and demography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Before the Baltic Tigers | afoe | A Fistful of Euros | European Opinion Says:
   February 13th, 2009 at 7:37 pm

   [...] a relatively good grade for its economic condition, compared to Latvia, but then we get the news from Edward today that Estonia turned in the 2nd worst EU growth performance in Q4 last year.   But glaring in [...]