KYIV

Ukraine’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 6 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, the Economy Ministry said, reversing five consecutive quarters of negative growth linked to the imposition of restrictions owing to COVID-19.

In a Reuters poll, economists had predicted an 8 percent year-on-year increase.

The ministry statement said economic activity in the first quarter had been subject to “continued negative dynamics of GDP in conditions of a January lockdown as well as the imposition of a ‘red zone’ in various regions of the country.

“In the second quarter of 2021, economic recovery, though still influenced by the pandemic and owing to the low base point from last year and the process of vaccination in the country and throughout the world,  showed a positive trend emerging,” the ministry said.

The figure, it said, was slightly lower than had been expected and that was due to higher than expected cost trends and an “unexpected delay” in the recovery of construction and agriculture. Those sectors were expected to pick up in the coming weeks and months and world prices would be more favourable to exporters,

The government forecasts 4.1 percent growth for all of 2021, cancelling out last year’s decline of 4 percent. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development issued a forecast of 3.5 percent GDP growth last month.

Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko told parliament last week that 2021 growth could be as high as 5 percent. Financial analysts said the final figure could depend to a great extent on the country’s ability to manage COVID, vaccinate Ukrainians and avoid lockdowns that stifle economic activity.

A senior official in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said a programme to oversee economic recovery was being drafted as the worst effects of the pandemic were over.

“We believe that the times of crisis are now behind us. I understand that the lack of finance and investment last year could have a latent effect, and we could still have declined in 2022 and 2023,” Yulia Sviridenko, deputy head of the president’s office, told an economic forum.

“It is for that very reason that we are concentrating our efforts on drafting and implementing a programme of economic recovery based on the experience of effective programmes that we used in past years.”

She cited programmes to ease the effects of long-term unemployment and large construction and road-building projects throughout the country.