Did Portugal’s GDP grow above the EU average between 2016 and 2019?
“Contrary to what happened in previous years, Portugal grew more than the European Union average in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. In this period+, a GDP growth of 1.5% was created, based on investment (28%) and exports (23%)”, reads the publication of January 14 on the page oficial do PS on Facebook, which shows a graph showing the evolution of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the years of António Costa’s first legislature as prime minister.
“Already this year, we had a pandemic, and in the 3rd quarter of 2021 Portugal was already the third fastest growing country across the European Union. We have to keep going”, he concludes.
not that respect real growth rate of GDP, in fact, the period between 2016 and 2019 (forming the quadrennium of the first PS Government based on contraption who took office at the end of 2015) stands out with the most positive variations 2002when Portugal joined the single European currency.
A saber: +2.02% in 2016, +3.51% in 2017, +2.85% in 2018 and +2.68% in 2019.
Between 2002 and 2015, in addition to variations exchanges of the real GDP growth rate in five years, the biggest increase was registered in 2017 with +2.51%. It was only once, over all these years, that the threshold of +2% was exceeded. In the 2016-2019 quadrennium, the growth rate was always greater than +2% and even peaked at +3.51% in 2017, a level that had not been reached since 2000 (at the end of the 1990s, surpassing the +4% fascia).
As for the relative comparison with all the Member States of the European Union, consulting Eurostat data, we found that, in the period between 2016 and 2019 Portugal’s GDP has always grown above average of the European Union. In 2016, however, the difference was tiny.
This Eurostat series started in 2010 and has since the only years in which Portugal’s GDP grew above the European Union average were those corresponding to the four-year period 2016-2019.
Finally, the claim that “in the 3rd quarter of 2021 Portugal was already the third fastest growing country throughout the European Union”, Polígrafo has already reached the recent article, the GDP of the European Union grew 3.9% in relation to the third quarter of Portugal20, the GDP of Portugal reached a growth of 4.2%making a total of 3 percentage points above average of the European Union.
In this comparison in terms of reference to the third quarter of 2021 countries, and looking at the other 21 countries, as gathered in the Eurostat report (including the USA), Portugal the 13th position, with the already 4.2%. The biggest increase was registered by Romania, with 8%, followed by Hungary (6.1%), Lithuania (6%), Denmark (5.4%), Poland (5.3%), Cyprus (5, 3%), Netherlands (5%), USA (4.9%), Austria (4.8%), Belgium (4.7%), Latvia (4.7%) and Sweden (4.5%) .
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Is Portugal “growing above the European Union average”, as António Costa said?
In the duel against André Ventura, for a series of PS achievements listed by the prime minister, during “two years of intense struggle”, he highlighted the numbers of the Government Coast between Covid-19, the unemployment rate and the economic growth of the country. country “above the EU average”. But was it factually accurate in this last claim?
Portugal also stood out among the countries that registered the highest increases compared to the previous quarter, such as Austria (+3.3%), France (+3.0%) and, in the third position of the table, Portugal (+2.9%). The lowest growth was recorded by Latvia and Romania (+0.3%). In the last position was Lithuania (0.0%), where the GDP remained unchanged.
Despite this growth in Portugal’s GDP, it should be noted that, according to the National Institute of Statistics and the Bank of Portugal, in 2020 Portugal registered the biggest drop in GDP since 1954, a total of -8.4%, essentially caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, in the same year, GDP1 consumed to 200. billion euros, explained by the fall in exports and private consumption.
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