Final consumption expenditure grew by 0.6%, largely due to the important areas of housing, energy and healthcare. Spending on furniture and household appliances, leisure and culture also continued to rise in the second quarter. In contrast, final consumption expenditure on clothing and financial and insurance services experienced a downturn. Final consumption expenditure by general government was up 0.7%.

Total investments dropped marginally by -0.7%, with construction investments falling by 0.3% and investments in fixed assets and software falling by -0.9%. Not all areas of investments in fixed assets and software were down: investments in processed metals and machine tools, in radio, television and telecommunications and software all recorded growth.

Exports of goods and services increased by a substantial 3,6%, with goods exports rising sharply by 4.5% and service exports rising more slowly by 1.3%. Imports of goods and services also posted a rise of +3.8%, with goods imports up by 4.5% and service imports up by 0.6%. The sharp increase in movements of goods can be attributed in large part to the “Easter effect”. On account of the position of Easter in this year’s calendar, the second quarter of 2008 had more working days than the same quarter the previous year, and this resulted in a higher growth rate. The same effect had led to a lower growth in Q1 2008.

On the production side, the sector dominated by industry increased its value added by 1.3% in the second quarter of 2008. The sector dominated by public services also increased its value added by 0.5%, the trade, hotels and restaurants, transport and communications sec-tor saw an increase of 0.5% and the agriculture sector an increase of 0.3%. As in the previous quarter, the sector dominated by financial market services suffered the greatest loss in value added (-1.6%) whereas the value added in the construction sector fell by -0.5%.

The GDP deflator rose by 2.8% compared with the same quarter of the previous year, whereas the final consumption deflator posted more moderate growth of 1.8%. Prices for fixed assets and software rose by 1.7% and construction prices again recorded strong growth of 3.7%. In the foreign trade sector, export prices rose by 2.5% and prices for imported goods and services rose by 2.6%.
In October 2008, SECO will, for the first time, publish quarterly figures for the GDP sectors on the income side and the gross national income for the period from 1990 to 2008 (second quarter). In future, quarterly figures for GDP on the income side will be published at the latest 14 days following publication of the quarterly figures for the production and expenditure approaches.

*Unless otherwise stated the percentage changes listed here refer to the previous quarter from seasonally and price adjusted figures (not annualised). ‘Real’ is used to describe the formulation ‘chain-linked quarterly estimates compiled at the average prices of the previous year, reference year 2000’.

Gross domestic product in Q2 2008