Bahrain saw its real gross domestic product growing by a sharply revised 0.2 percent in the final three months of 2010 compared with the previous quarter, the data from the Central Informatics Organization showed.
On an annual basis, GDP growth of the country slowed to 1.8 percent in the first quarter from a revised 3.7 percent in October-December 2010, the data
also showed.
“I guess it could have been worse. Down 1.4 percent does not look too bad given the backdrop and given some of the horror stories about what was happening in Bahrain,” said Daniel Kaye, senior economist at National Bank of Kuwait.
Analysts polled by Reuters in June slashed their 2011 growth forecasts to 2.7 percent from 3.4 percent expected in March. Some said on Wednesday the first quarter GDP reading was in line with expectations.
“A lot of analysts have already downgraded Bahrain. This (first quarter data) seems to be consistent with that,” said Giyas Gokkent, head of research at National Bank of Abu Dhabi.
“We were expecting adverse impact on the financial sector. If you look at the financial sector in nominal terms it was flat year-on-year and in real terms there was actually some growth, which is surprising,” he said.
