BUDAPEST: Hungary posted its third succesive quarter of economic growth on Thursday after emerging from recession in early 2013, preliminary official data showed on Thursday, exceeding economist forecasts.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.8 percent in the third quarter versus the second, when the economy grew 0.4 percent, mirroring a modest recovery in other central and eastern European emerging economies.
Many countries in the central Europe region and across what analysts call emerging Europe have experienced sharply slowing 12-month inflation this year.
Late on Wednesday, analyst Williams Jackson at Capital Economics in London said that if the eurozone could "muddle through" without falling into a new crisis, the economic conditions for eastern Europe, with the exceptions of Russia and Turkey, "may now be falling into place in much of Eastern Europe for a Goldilocks period of relatively strong growth accompanied by low inflation."
The official data on Thursday said that on an annual basis gross domestic product rose by 1.7 percent year-on-year, the second annual increase in a row after five quarters of contraction during the EU member's second recession in four years in 2012.
Hungary is not a member of the eurozone.
Economists said growth in industrial exports, particularly in Hungary's large car manufacturing sector, was now feeding into GDP results, while agriculture is performing better than in 2013.
Hungary's GDP fell by 1.7 percent in 2012, down from 1.3 and 1.6 percent increases in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
The government forecasts growth of around 1.0 percent in 2013 and 2.0 percent next year, a recovery Prime Minister Viktor Orban says proves Hungary is on the right track as it approaches elections in April or May 2014.
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