? Q4 was a soft spot and mainland growth in Q1 is about as expected ? No need for Norges Bank to change view based on today?s figures. GDP growth in Mainland Norway was 0.7% q/q in Q1. Our forecast was 0.7% while consensus and Norges Bank was 0.8%. Growth in Q4 was 0.2% q/q, marginally revised down from 0.3 %. The main picture was broadly as we had expected. Consumption of goods rebounded strongly in Q1 pulling up the retail sector. Apart from this production growth was moderately good in the rest of the service sectors and on average in good production. Production of electricity however decreased and pulled down growth by 0.1% point. That was a surprise to us and possibly also to Norges Bank. In that case ?underlying? mainland growth which excludes electricity production was as expected by Norges Bank. If one are to look for weaknesses in today?s figures it must be investments among the mainland firms which fell rather sharply after a drop also in Q4. It could be that this is an effect of tighter lending standards/increased lending margins from the banks the last years. All in all today?s figures were only marginally below Norges Bank. The main conclusion on the last MPC meeting was that the real economy developed about as expected and today?s figures should confirm this. Total GDP fell 0.2%, but this was no news as we had expected -0.1%. Total GDP growth has absolutely no influence on Norges Bank. Q/Q growth in the mainland economy
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