Economy’s 1.6% GDP growth beats forecasts

THE economy grew by around 1.6% — in GDP terms — in the second quarter of this year, according to Central Statistics Office (CSO) data published yesterday.

This quarter-on-quarter growth comfortably beat the 0.25% forecasts, and marks the first back-to-back quarterly GDP rise in some time. However, the CSO was quick to dampen talk of this signalling ongoing growth in the economy.

“We’re trying to caution people in over-interpreting these results by putting the results in the context of the volatility overall in our seasonally adjusted estimates and not to read too much into them,” said Michael Connolly, a senior statistician at the CSO.