APS : Saturday, 21 January 2017
ALGIERS- Algeria recorded a 0.5% drop in GDP (gross domestic product) growth in the third quarter of 2016, compared with the same period in 2015, while the sector of hydrocarbons showed a record increase, the National Office of Statistics told APS.
The overall growth stood at 3% in Q3 2016, against 3.5% in Q3 2015, said the ONS.
This growth was driven by the hydrocarbon sector, which showed a performance of 7.7%, against -1.4% in Q3 2015, added the source.
However, the non-hydrocarbon GDP growth declined to 2.3%, against 5.4%, while the non-agriculture GDP growth dropped to 2.7%, against 3%, during the same period of reference, said ONS.
The GDP growth hit 5.2% in the sector of building, public works and hydraulics (against 4.9% in Q3 2015), thanks to the oil services and public works (7.8% against 2.9%).
The sector of agriculture, forestry and fisheries showed 4.7% GDP growth against 7.2% during the same period a year earlier.
The same slowdown trend was recorded in the sectors of market services (3.9% in Q3 2016 against 5%in Q3 2015), industries (2.8% against 4.5%) and non-market services (3.8% against 4.1%).
Market services, which comprise the sectors of transport and communications, showed a 3.6% growth against 5.9% during the same period of reference, trading (4.5% against 4.2%), hotels-cafés-restaurants (-1.2% against +4.6%), services provided to companies (5.4% against 2.9%) and services provided to households (2.2% against 8.7%), according to figures provided by ONS.
The slight decline in activity in the market services is mainly due to the overall and sectoral growth, on the one hand, and to the drop in goods import, on the other hand, explained the ONS.
In the industrial sector, the branches that recorded a negative growth are iron and steel, metal, engineering, electrics and electronics-ISMME (-0.7%), textile (-0.3%) and various industries (-10.2%), added the ONS.
In 2015, the overall GDP growth hit 3.8%, the same rate as expected in the complementary Finance Act 2015, while the International Monetary Fund (FMI) forecast 3.7% growth.
