This is just a preliminary estimate; more detailed information on GDP development will be published on June 9. We can say now that the Czech Republic's economic growth is rather low compared with the neighbouring countries. On the very same day, Slovakia boasted of real growth of 4.6% (0.8% in a quarter-on-quarter comparison). Poland saw a year-on-year rise of about 3%, according to analyst estimates. Surprisingly enough, even Germany got ahead of the Czech Republic with quarter-on-quarter growth being the same at 0.2%, but jumping 1.7% compared with the same period a year ago.
Weaker growth of the Czech economy compared to Poland and Slovakia was obvious from the comparison of growth in the industrial output in individual months of Q1. Moreover, this is only a fast estimate; CSU analysts many times revised the originally announced GDP development figures upwards. The current unemployment figures from the Ministry of Labour showing a decline from 9.7% to 9.2% in April (down by almost 33,000 unemployed) indicate that any major recovery of the Czech economy may come in the second quarter of this year.