Sales of weight loss drug help Denmark  to avoid recession 

Pharma industry driving force behind expansion, although rising private consumption also supported growth

Wegovy weight loss drug: The global sales of  Novo Nordisk, which makes the drug as well as Ozempic, has helped the Danish economy avoid recession last year 

Denmark’s economy expanded rapidly in the last three months of 2023 as Novo Nordisk and pharmaceutical peers ramped up production.

Gross domestic product rose 2% from the previous three months, Statistics Denmark said in a preliminary reading for the fourth quarter.

The pharmaceutical industry was the driving force behind the expansion, it said, though rising private consumption also supported growth.

Full-year growth for 2023, which came in at 1.8%, would have landed at minus 0.1% without the country’s pharmaceutical industry, according to the data.

The statistics agency last year started publishing GDP figures excluding the drug industry amid concern that Novo was distorting the numbers and masking weaknesses elsewhere in the economy.

The economic rebound comes as Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo is investing heavily to meet massive demand for its blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy and diabetes medicine Ozempic. 

Rising sales have boosted profits to record levels for what is now Europe’s most valuable company, as well as pulling up the entire domestic economy. 

The figures show a “fantastic final sprint” for the Danish economy in 2023, Tore Stramer, chief economist at the Danish Chamber of Commerce, said. 

As drugmakers continue to expand production capacity, he expects a “continued solid growth contribution” from the industry in 2024.

Statistics Denmark also revised third-quarter GDP data, saying the economy grew rather than contracting as previously suggested, meaning Denmark didn’t fall into a recession after all.

“So the technical recession was just an illusion,” Helge J. Pedersen, chief economist at Nordea, said in a note.

The figures “fundamentally change the picture of the development in the Danish economy” but also show that it has “become very difficult to predict the economic development measured by GDP,” he said.

• Bloomberg