During the first quarter of 2023, Portugal was the second growing country in the European Union, according to Eurostat
Following an estimate recently released by Eurostat – the European Union’s Statistics Office – Portugal was the second country that grew the most between January 1 and March 31, 2023.
The data point to a growth of 1.6% in Portugal’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which puts the country in second place, being surpassed by Poland, which registered a growth of 3.9%. In addition to Portugal and Poland, only Finland recorded growth above 1%, with 1.1% and thus reaching third place in the Eurostat table.
In global terms and within Europe, the average growth was 0.1%, compared to the last quarter of 2022 (between 1 October and 31 December 2022). However, among the countries that make up the European Union, there was an average growth of 0.2% in relation to the latest data.
The Portuguese National Institute of Statistics had disclosed – before these Eurostat data – that the Portuguese economy had grown by 1.6% in 2023, due to tourism and the volume of business related to exports.
The European Commission recently released the spring economic forecasts for the countries that make up the European Union, where it revised upwards the projections for the Portuguese economy, presenting estimates of GDP growth in Portugal in the order of 2.4% during the year 2023.
“This estimate of growth in Portugal, of 2.4% is double the level of the European Union”, stressed the European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni.
The European Union’s estimates regarding the growth of the Portuguese economy during the year 2023 are close to the first quarter of 2022, when, in Portugal, the GDP recorded a chain increase of 2.3%, being the strongest in the entire European Union.
