New Zealand's gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 1.0 percent in the December 2020 quarter, following a revised 13.9 percent jump in the September quarter and 11 percent fall in the quarter before that, the country's statistics department Stats NZ said on Thursday.
"It is not surprising that these numbers are jumping around. The world is dealing with the ongoing impact of COVID-19 and there will be volatility for some time," Robertson said in a statement.
"New Zealand had an extremely strong bounce-back in the September quarter and some of that has evened out in the December quarter," Robertson said, and there is also a lot of volatility within sectors in the economy.
The economy was 0.9 percent below where it was in the December quarter last year.
"Nevertheless, we outperformed the countries we compare ourselves to on this measure."
Australia dropped by 1.1 percent, the United States by 2.4 percent, Britain by 7.8 percent and Japan by 1.3 percent.
These figures show that the overall all size of the economy was 322 billion NZ dollars (232 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020. This compares favourably with December's Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update forecast of 307 billion NZ dollars (221 billion U.S. dollars).
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