Friday 28 August 2015

What drove GDP growth in Greece during Q2 2015?

Many people, myself including, were quite surprised by 2nd quarter's Greek GDP print. I think that it would be interesting to take a quick look at the drivers of GDP growth.

source: ELSTAT, own calculations

I deconstructed GDP growth using my usual simplistic method. Per that, the biggest contributor was households' final consumption expenditure. Imports' plummeting was an important driver as well and finally, general government final consumption contributed a bit too. People looking at nominal figures published in budget execution bulletins and being puzzled due to the hefty decreases recorded there should keep in mind that the figures I used here depict volumes. 

What puzzles me is the fact that, unlike during 2014, the increase in household consumption was accompanied by a decrease in imports (essentially the first such occurence since late 2013) which usually means a decrease in household consumption as you can see in the chart. Imports' decrease is probably going to act as a buffer for GDP growth in Q3 as well, where capital controls are going to have quite a fierce negative impact on imports.

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