Portuguese GDP increase 'set to beat official estimates'
Portugal's increase in gross domestic product (GDP) during 2007 could exceed official estimates, reports suggest.
According to Thomson Financial, the government has predicted that the rate of growth will come to 1.8%, while an increase of 1.9% has been forecast by the Bank of Portugal.
However, prime minister Jose Socrates stated that they may have underestimated the actual figure.
He commented: "It is quite possible that GDP posts the largest growth in seven years and beats the government and Bank of Portugal's targets."
Mr Socrates added that officials were expecting this year's increase in GDP to come to more than two per cent, despite the current turbulence in the global economy.
However, its forecast for the next 12 months has been reduced from 2.4% to 2.2% in anticipation of issues related to problems such as the credit crunch.
Fears over a global recession have had serious consequences for the stock markets in the last 24 hours, with share prices seeing their biggest falls since the terror attacks on September 11th 2001.
< Back to latest news