Green Shoots Of Recovery

According to my sources, Estonia is no less than in second place in forecast growth in GDP for the 27 EU states in 2010-2011!

The figure stands at about 3.5 per cent (only Poland is higher at 4 per cent). Not quite the figure of the heady days of the early-mid '00s (peaking at 10 per cent in 2006), which may be no bad thing, but a vast improvement of the whopping 14.1 per cent contraction last year. So the belt tightening was the right thing to do all along, hats off to Estonia and its economic restraint!

For the record, neighbours Latvia came in at less than 1 per cent growth, Lithuania much stronger at about 2.6 per cent, the UK, France, Denmark and the Netherlands hovering around the overall EU average of 1.6 per cent and poor old Greece the only one still in the red at about -1.8 per cent.