BUDAPEST, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Hungary's gross domestic product (GDP) was up 3.6 percent year on year in the third quarter of 2017, official data revealed on Tuesday.
If seasonally and calendar adjusted, the growth rate for the third quarter stood at 3.8 percent, Hungarian central statistical office KSH said in a statement.
"The main contributors to the growth were market-based services," KSH said in the statement. "The volume of GDP rose by 3.7 percent in the first three quarters of 2017 compared to a year earlier," KSH added.
Compared to the previous quarter, the GDP grew by 0.8 percent.
"Hungary's economy grew dynamically in the third quarter of this year, a trend accompanied by steadily rising wages, and thus working people have been gaining more and more from economic expansion," Minister for National Economy Mihaly Varga said in the statement.
"Thanks among others to the economic stimulus generated by the six-year wage agreement of last November, the ministry is expecting further improvement in employment, domestic demand and competitiveness," he added.
In his analysis of preliminary data in the third quarter, the minister observed that this figure was already better than that of the previous quarter.
"As statistics on wage hikes and VAT revenues are pointing to an even more vibrant economy, final data are predicted to show even higher GDP growth," Varga said.
"Expansion is mainly attributable to the industrial sector and the housing boom-fuelled construction sector as well as market services," according to the minister.
The economy of the European Union grew on average by 2.5 percent year on year in the third quarter, according to official data.
The Hungarian growth was higher than that of the EU, which signaled that Hungary's economic convergence process with highly developed member states has remained unbroken, Varga said.
The Hungarian government was expecting the pace of economic growth to accelerate in the last quarter on the back of strong retail sales and robust consumption, he said.
