HELSINKI: The Finnish economy expanded considerably more than estimated last year.
Statistics Finland released a new set of preliminary data indicating that the country’s gross domestic product grew by 1.9 percent – 0.5 percentage points more than estimated in March – to 216 billion euros in 2016.
The statistics bureau said it revised its growth estimate due to the availability of new data on intermediate goods used for production by a number of industrial sectors
Tuomas Rothovius, a senior statistician at Statistics Finland, reminds that what may seem to be a notable statistical difference is in fact nothing out of the ordinary. “The change in economic growth tends to be adjusted by 0.6 percentage points between the first publication [of data] to the last,” he told reporters.
Statistics Finland also reported that household consumption and private investment were the main drivers of growth in 2016.
The volume of household consumption, it revealed, increased by 1.9 percent, that of private consumption by 1.8 percent and that of public consumption expenditure by 1.2 percent from the previous year.
Private investments, meanwhile, picked up by 7.9 percent and public investments by 3.9 percent. Investments in construction projects, and machinery and equipment acquisitions increased particularly, whereas investments in research and development dropped moderately from the previous year, according to the revised data.
