Ireland’s export-driven economy returns to GDP growth, but unemployment rises to 13.4 per cent
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/06/2010 (5653 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
DUBLIN – Export-driven Ireland has resumed growth following eight straight quarters of sharp declines, but the domestic side of the economy is still declining and unemployment keeps rising, the Central Statistics Office reported Wednesday.
The government agency said Ireland’s gross domestic product grew 2.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2010. It was the first such rise in Irish GDP since the latest quarter of 2007, when Ireland’s economy began to buckle amid a bursting bubble in construction and property speculation.
However gross national product — a different measure which excludes the largely expatriated profits of foreign multinationals — continued to slide a further 0.5 per cent in the January-March quarter, suggesting that Ireland’s domestic economy is still struggling to climb out of its worst recession since the 1930s.
The agency said the number of people claiming unemployment benefits reached a new record high of 452,882, a 3.4 per cent rise from May. That figure includes 79,239 people in part-time or casual jobs still eligible for welfare.
Overall the unemployment rose to 13.4 per cent from May’s rate of 13.2 per cent, a 16-year high.
Still, economists welcomed the news of GDP’s return to the black as a long-awaited sign that Ireland’s recession is ending.
They credited the GDP rebound to Ireland’s dependence on the growing U.S. economy — 600 American companies have operations in Ireland — and the recent slide in the euro. The weaker European currency makes Ireland’s exports of software, pharmaceuticals, food and services cheaper for its two biggest trading partners in Britain and the United States.
Increasingly economists are forecasting that Ireland’s GDP and GNP will record gains in 2010, setting aside earlier predictions of another year of falls. By contrast, Ireland’s GDP fell 7.6 per cent and its GNP 10.7 per cent in 2009 — the biggest such falls in Irish economic history.