Slovenia and Romania both entered a recession, official data showed yesterday, while Hungary sank deeper into recession as the economy shrank more than expected.
Slovenia's gross domestic product in the first quarter of this year contracted by 6.4 per cent compared to the last quarter of 2008, the Slovenian Statistics office said in a statement.
Recession is technically defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth and in October-December last year, GDP shrank by 4.1 per cent compared to the preceding three-month period.
The strong contraction in the first quarter was caused by a substantial real decrease of investments, exports and imports, the office said.
On a yearly basis, Slovenia's economy contracted by nine per cent compared to the first quarter of last year.
Official statistics showed the Romanian economy shrank 4.6 per cent in first quarter 2009 compared with the previous three months.
Romanian gross domestic product contracted 3.4 per cent in the final quarter of 2008, according to the statistics institute Ins. The agency said the agriculture sector registered a 7.6 per cent decline in activity in the first quarter and the industrial sector 1.4 per cent.
Compared with first quarter 2008 the momentum declined by 6.2 per cent in the same period this year.
The International Monetary Fund recently approved a €12.9-billion loan for Romania, forecasting a 4.1 per cent contraction in the economy this year.
Figures released yesterday also showed that Hungary sank deeper into recession in the first quarter of 2009 as the economy shrank more than expected.
Hungary's gross domestic product shrank by a steeper-than-expected 2.5 per cent in January-March compared to the previous quarter, the central statistics bureau KSH said.
This was worse than KSH's preliminary figure of 2.3 per cent but in line with analyst expectations.
On a year-on-year basis, Hungary's GDP contracted by 5.4 per cent in the period from January to March compared to the same period in 2008.
Last year, the Hungarian economy expanded modestly by 0.5 per cent, down from 1.1 per cent in 2007.