Cape Verde’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 6.2% in the second quarter of this year, compared to the same period in 2018, driven by private consumption and exports, according to indicators released by the National Statistics Institute (INE).
According to data from the Quarterly National Accounts of the Cape Verdean INE, this growth is higher than that recorded in the first quarter of the year, which was 5.2% higher in year-on-year terms.
These figures translate into average economic growth in the first two-quarters of 5.7%, compared to 5% in 2018.
Exports of goods and services grew by 8.5% in the second quarter, also up from 8.0% in the previous quarter, while imports fell by 4.0%, the first decline in several quarters.
According to INE, private consumption increased 2.9% in real terms in the second quarter of 2019 but still slowed down from the 5.3% growth recorded in the previous quarter.
Public consumption showed a negative year-on-year rate of change of 14.2%, when it had increased 20.8% in the previous quarter, while investment registered a year-on-year change of 0.5% in the second quarter of 2019, against a negative variation of 11.4% in the first three months of 2019.
At the end of July, in an interview with Lusa, Cape Verde’s prime minister, Ulisses Correia e Silva, said that the government’s more realistic outlook for this year points to the economic growth of around 6% of GDP.
Still far from the target, forecast previously, of 7% per year.
The prime minister said that the 7% growth figure is not an obsession, it is a justified target because they need to reach that figure continuously so that they can double, in a decade, the per capita income of Cape Verdeans.
Source: MNA