Daily Insight-In the spotlight: Real GDP growth up 4.2% in 2010

Real GDP grew 4.2% YoY in 2010, according to the preliminary data from the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. The reported data is very close to the level that we expected for 2010, namely, 4.3% (see our October quarterly report). The actual data also considerably exceeds the government\'s official forecast of 3.7%. On a quarterly basis, Ukraine\'s GDP growth accelerated to 1% in 4Q10, which backs our assessment that the 4Q10 was a rather strong quarter (in 3Q10, real GDP grew by merely 0.1% QoQ, after strong growth of 3.8% in 2Q10, and a drop of 0.3% in 1Q10). We envisage that after the State Statistics Committee finalises the data, real GDP growth will be even closer to our forecast, which is 4.3% for 2010. Mr Valeriy Lytvytskiy, the head of a group of advisors to the NBU\'s governor, also said that the published preliminary data was lower than the forecast by the NBU, which collects its own datasets, so will therefore be slightly upgraded.