MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine economic activity keeps advancing at over 8%

As had been anticipated earlier in the week economic activity in Argentina expanded 9.1% in September compared to a year ago, accumulating 8.5% in the first nine months of 2007, according to a Thursday release from the Statistics and Census Institute, Indec.

The monthly economic activity index shows 0.9 percentage point advance over August. Argentine president Nestor Kirchner had anticipated the percentage earlier in the week during the inauguration of a Honda auto plant when he said that "the Argentine economy remains strong and generating jobs". Last August the monthly economic activity index showed a 9.2% increase, --compared to a year ago--, that is one tenth of a percentage higher than in September. Based on these indexes analysts forecast Argentina's GDP will expand over 8% in 2007, for the fifth year running boosted by an extraordinary boom in domestic demand, manufacturing and farm exports. The strong growth of the first three quarters anticipates a similarly robust fourth quarter. A private consulting firm in Buenos Aires said that economic activity during October expanded 8.9% over the same month a year ago and 0.6 percentage points compared to September. "In October the financial sector, manufacturing and construction were the main locomotives of the economy with 27.5%, 9.4% and 7.8% growth respectively", said a report from the consulting firm Orlando Ferreres and Associates. However the Argentine Central Bank monthly poll among analysts and market operators shows that the twelve months expansion of 2007 will be above 6.3%.