Nov 14, 2023 at 9:31 AM Update: 34 minutes ago
The Dutch economy shrank by 0.2 percent last quarter. It is the third quarter in a row that the economy has shrunk. Investments by companies in particular have fallen. Companies have also ordered less because they still have to use up their stocks.
The government spent more money in the third quarter, but this could not pull the Netherlands out of the recession. This was evident from figures from statistics agency CBS on Tuesday.
A recession occurs when there is a contraction for two quarters in a row compared to the previous quarter. This was already the case with -0.5 and -0.4 percent contraction in the first half of the year. This is now followed by a minus of 0.2 percent.
© LocalFocus / CBS
The Netherlands is doing worse than neighboring countries
Companies mainly spent less on so-called fixed assets, such as machines, vehicles and buildings. They also ordered less from suppliers because they still had large stocks.
International trade was also not going well. Exports fell by 1.6 percent, while imports fell by 2.3 percent.
In any case, exports are not going well. September even had the biggest contraction since May 2020, when we were in the first corona wave. Exports of machinery, chemical products and food in particular fell in September. Partly as a result, exports in that month were 4.8 percent lower than a year earlier.
A recession, not a crisis
Peter Hein van Mulligen, chief economist at Statistics Netherlands, thinks that the economy will also shrink in the current quarter. “The first signs show a continuation of previous quarters. Consumer confidence is still low and there is no recovery in the industry either.”
Yet Van Mulligen does not expect the current recession to cause a crisis. The chief economist points out that unemployment is low and the number of bankruptcies is small. During an economic crisis the opposite often occurs.
Neighboring countries are doing better
The figures in the Netherlands are doing worse than neighboring countries. For example, Belgium experienced a plus of 0.5 percent in the third quarter, while the French economy grew 0.1 percent. The British economy did not grow, but neither did it shrink. The Germans did experience a contraction, although at 0.1 percent it was smaller than ours.
CBS emphasizes that these are provisional figures. The statistics office will receive more and more figures in the coming weeks that clarify the state of the economy. That is why CBS will come up with a second estimate just before Christmas. This may differ slightly, although the difference is usually limited to 0.1 or 0.2 percentage points.
2023-11-14 09:35:56
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