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Remember earlier this year when Latvian blondes decided to hold a march to lift the spirits of Latvia and rescue its economy? It didn’t work.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Latvia’s economy shed 19 percent of its value in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, the country’s statistics agency said Wednesday, highlighting the woes in the European Union’s worst economy.<\/p>\n
Latvian Statistics said that the third quarter fall in gross domestic product was led by a severe drop in retail trade, down 28.7 percent year-on-year, and construction, down 36 percent.<\/p>\n
From January to September Latvia, which is suffering its worst recession on record, saw its economy shrink a total 18.6 percent, the agency said.<\/p>\n
The Baltic state is undergoing a drastic correction after four years of stellar growth that followed the country’s membership to the EU. In 2006 the economy grew a dizzying 12.2 percent.<\/p>\n
In the past year, however, Latvia’s government has been forced to slash expenditures, raise taxes, and sign onto an emergency bailout loan worth euro7.5 billion ($11 billion) with international lenders in order to prevent bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
Unemployment, meanwhile, continues to climb, and last week Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, said Latvia has the highest rate of joblessness in the bloc, at 20.9 percent.<\/p>\n
Government officials and economists have said the economy would hit the lowest point sometime this winter, with economic growth likely to resume in 2011.<\/p>\n
Latvia’s GDP is expected to fall approximately 18 percent this year, and another 4 percent in 2010.<\/p>\n
Join the conversation about this story »<\/a><\/p>\n See Also:<\/b><\/p>\n Remember earlier this year when Latvian blondes decided to hold a march to lift the spirits of Latvia and rescue its economy? It didn’t work. —– RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Latvia’s economy shed 19 percent of its value in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, the country’s statistics agency said Wednesday, highlighting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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