Summary
In 2006, GDP grew 4.2% in nominal terms, representing around 155.4 thousand million Euro. In real terms it increased 1.4%, 0.5 percentage points (p.p.) more than the previous year. This better performance was due to a larger contribution of the external demand to the economic growth (+0,5 p.p. in 2006 against -0.7 p.p. in 2005), mainly based on the exports of goods and services evolution, which rose by 8,7% in 2006, in real terms (2,1% in 2005). The domestic demand decelerated again reflecting, in particular, the contraction of public consumption. It was the first time that this aggregate presented a negative variation in the present time-series (1995-2006).