After the boom
Tim Legierse and Niels Visser.
Economic Research Department.
The economy in the Netherlands left the top of the current business cycle behind in 2007. The normal cyclical downturn in economic growth is strongly intensified for 2008 and 2009 by rising inflation and turbulence on the financial markets, coinciding with a growth slowdown among our main trading partners. For this year, real gross domestic product (GDP) is still 2% higher than in 2007. However, for next year we expect zero economic growth. On balance, production will remain at the level of the first quarter of 2008.