East European Dynamos Driving Economic Growth In E.U.: U.N.

GENEVA, July 20 (AFP) - Dynamic east European economies are driving growth in the European Union this year and they should continue to outstrip the traditional west European economic powers into 2005, a United Nations report said Tuesday.
The mid-year economic survey by the UN's Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) said real gross domestic product (GDP) in the 25 member EU was set to grow by 2.2 percent in 2004 and 2.4 percent in 2005.
Those growth rates are largely fuelled by the performance of countries like Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, which joined the EU in May, it added.
The eight new EU members from central and eastern Europe are set to achieve combined average growth of 4.5 percent this year and again in 2005, against two and 2.2 percent for the pre-enlargement 15 member states.
"In the early months of 2004, economic growth in the new EU members accelerated harder led by a strong economic upturn in Poland, and a continuing surge in economic activity in the Baltic region," ECE director of economic analysis Adbur Chowdhury said.
The new EU members are expected to continue to benefit from the general improvement in global and west European demand from imports, the survey said.
Former Soviet states in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are also thriving economically, partly thanks to the surge in oil and commodity prices.
"The CIS and eastern Europe continue to be important dynamos of global economic activity," Chowdhury told journalists.
Growth in Russia should reach seven percent in 2004 but tail off in 2005 to 5.7 percent, the UN predicted.
The survey forecast that fellow CIS countries Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus should sustain high single-digit growth rates thanks to export demand for steel and manufacturing.