The Statistical Office revised the growth of the Slovak economy in the last quarter of last year slightly down from 3.1% to 3.0%, according to updated data released on Tuesday. Compared with the previous quarter, Slovakia's GDP increased by 0.8%. For the whole year of 2016, GDP growth slowed to 3.3%. The main engine of growth remains strong foreign demand and accelerating growth in household consumption. On the other hand, investments expected in the fourth quarter of last year showed a significant annual decline when they have a negative effect on the strong base effect in public investment, according to an analysis of UniCredit Bank Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The export performance of the Slovak economy at the end of last year continued to improve when the Slovak industry largely benefited from a recovery in the European market.
Threats to the Slovak economy continue to come mainly from global geopolitical developments. "Several major European economies led by Germany, France and Italy have elections this year. And yet although we still expect that these elections will not fundamentally change the course of these countries, the risk of victory of political forces based on protectionism, which could contribute to further destabilisation of Europe, it is not negligible. Alternatively, the surprising victory of these anti-systemic parties in any of the countries would probably lead to a deterioration in sentiment across the EU economy and a slowdown respectively which will then stop the current economic recovery in Europe. Globally, the threat in particular, would be any increase in protectionism in world trade after the onset of Donald Trump's presidency," said UniCredit Banks's analyst Ľubomír Koršňák.
