The economy expanded by 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter, year-on-year, to 27.387 billion litas. Compared with the third quarter of 2011, the GDP contracted by 5.5 percent between October and December, according to the second GDP estimate based on the assessment of GDP components by production, expenditure and income approaches.
The first estimate of GDP for 2011 showed an annual growth rate of 5.8 percent. The year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter growth rates for the fourth quarter were 4.3 percent and -5.6 percent, respectively.
The statistics office said that it revised the fourth-quarter GDP growth rate after more comprehensive and more exact statistical data on construction, services and taxes came in.
According to the latest data, the strongest year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter was recorded in construction (33.8 pct), agriculture, forestry and fishery (7.6 pct), trade, hotels and restaurants, transport, warehousing and communications services (5.4 pct). Positive changes in added value were also recorded in services.
The slowest growth was in manufacturing (1.5 pct). The added value in the entire industrial sector shrank by 1.1 percent, mostly due to a sharp decline in added value in electricity, gas, stream supply and air conditioning segment.
Household consumption spending grew by 8.1 percent in the fourth quarter, and public spending went up by 1.3 percent. Gross capital formation, which soared by 45.7 percent in the first quarter of 2011 and by 20.7 percent in the second quarter, increased by 7.9 percent in the third quarter and by 10.4 percent in the fourth quarter.
Exports rose by 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year before and imports grew by 3.3 percent. In 2011 both exports and imports exceeded the pre-crisis levels (of 2008).
On a seasonally and workday-adjusted basis, Lithuania’s GDP grew by 6 percent in 2011 from a year before and by 1 percent in the fourth quarter versus the previous quarter.
