Economic growth figures fail to impress election campaigners

A second quarter of marginal economic growth has failed to impress party finance experts, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Wednesday.


The lack of consumer and producer confidence continue to highlight the need to form a new cabinet quickly after the September 12 general election and come up with a package of reforms, the paper says.
The national statistics office CBS said on Tuesday the Dutch economy grew 0.2% in the second quarter of the year, a figure which surprised economists.
Nevertheless, any recovery is still on very shaky ground, MPs said.
Minimal
‘This is very minimal growth, a ray of hope but no more than that,’ Mark Harbers, an MP for the right wing VVD said. ‘There is still a lot of work to be done before the Dutch economy is healthy again.’
‘The election campaign must focus on how we remove this uncertainty,’ Wouter Koolmees of the Liberal democratic party D66, told the paper.
Eddy van Hijum, finance spokesman for the Christian Democrats, said rising unemployment and the lack of consumer confidence ‘show we have to save, reform and invest’. ‘The crisis has not gone on holiday,’ Van Hijum said.
The government’s macro-economic forecasting agency CBP said earlier it expects the Dutch economy to contract by 0.75% this year, but economists expect this to be revised in the light of the positive first half trend.

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