Gross domestic product - 2. quarter of 2007

Real GDP grew by 6.0% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2007; nominal GDP rose by over ten percent and the overall price level increased by nearly four percent. The growth of overall demand was equally caused by household final consumption expenditure and gross capital formation; the contribution of external trade was very small.
According to preliminary estimates, real GDP increased by 6.0% in Q2 2007 compared to Q2 2006. Adjusted for seasonal and working day effects, GDP grew by 1.4% in comparison to Q1 2007. With reference to information sources update, estimated growth of GDP in Q1 2007 increased from 6.1% to 6.4%.

Supply side of the economy

A year-on-year increase of 6.0% in gross value added (constant prices) was mainly due to three, in terms of volume the most important industries: manufacturing (+10.5%), wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles (+14.2%) and real estate, renting and business activities (+11.3%).

Nominal GDP grew by 10.2% year-on-year and reached CZK 899.7 billion in Q2 2007; total gross value added (GVA) increased to CZK 813.0 billion (+10.1%). The difference (CZK 86.7 billion) is attributable to taxes on products (mainly VAT and consumer taxes) less subsidies. The more considerable increase in the overall price level (GDP deflator) by 3.9% year-on-year, which was 38.5% of the nominal GDP growth, resulted from unequal increases in deflators of output (+2.7%) and intermediate consumption (+2.1%), which reflected, inter alia, the different trends of export and import prices.

Demand side of the economy

The contributions of individual expenditure components to the growth of real GDP widely varied – highly favourable impact of increase in household final consumption expenditure (+3.0 p.p.) and gross capital formation (+3.0 p.p.) on the one hand; on the other hand moderate contribution of the external trade balance (+0.3 p.p.) and negative contribution of a decrease in government final consumption expenditure (-0.3 p.p.).


In comparison to Q2 2006, household final consumption expenditure at constant prices rose by 6.5%. Expenditure at current prices increased by CZK 32.6 billion (+8.6%), i.e. slightly faster than household disposable income. The highest nominal increases were observed for expenditure on motor vehicles, food, tobacco products, furniture and recreation. The year-on-year increase of deflator (+2.0%) has reached the highest level since Q4 2004.

The year-on-year growth of gross fixed capital formation (+4.2%, constant prices) was pulled predominantly by investment in buildings and structures (except residential buildings) where 41.0% of total fixed capital formation investment was targeted.

The considerable nominal increase in inventories in Q2 2007 was due to all types of inventories, in particular in manufacturing, power industry and construction.

The year-on-year nominal increase of CZK 16.2 billion in active balance of external trade in goods and services was completely eliminated by deflation to constant prices through improvement of terms of trade by 2.0%; export prices increased by 1.0% on average year-on-year and import prices fell by 0.9%.

EU 27 and Euro area (EU 13) GDP grew by 2.8% and 2.5% respectively in Q2 2007, according to estimates released by Eurostat on 4 September 2007. GDP in Slovakia increased by 9.4%, in Poland by 6.9%, in Austria by 3.7%, in Germany by 2.5% and in Hungary by 1.8%.
Please note that the Czech Statistical Office will adhere to the standard concept of GDP presentation applied by Eurostat and, starting from the year 2008, GDP adjusted for seasonal and working day effects will be published as the main figure. Such adjusted GDP estimate may sometimes very slightly differ from the one used hitherto; experimental calculations indicate that differences in excess of 0.2 percentage points are very rare. For example, year-on-year growth of GDP in the second quarter of 2007 was the same (6.0%) for GDP adjusted and non-adjusted for seasonal and working day effects.

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Contact: Jan Heller, tel. (+420) 274 052 865, e-mail: jan.heller@csu.gov.cz
Related time series: /produkty/hdp_ts
Selected tables: http://www.czso.cz/eng/edicniplan.nsf/p/50n1-el