OREANDA-NEWS. September 17, 2008. The Ukrainian economy is showing the high pace of growth, as GDP grew by 10.9% in August 2008 year-on-year and by 7.1% in January-August 2008 year-over-year, Economy Minister Bohdan Danylyshyn said.

"The ascending pace of GDP was stipulated by the development of agriculture. Its contribution to GDP growth in line with industry was the biggest among all kinds of economic activity and amounted to 1.7%," he said.

Danylyshyn said that this year's significant increase in the yield of grain and grain leguminous crops compared with 2007 had been a major factor for GDP growth owing to favorable weather conditions, which, consequently, had effect on a 24.4% increase in gross value added (GVA) in agriculture (a 2.9% decrease in eight months of 2007).

According to the minister, GVA growth of 10.7% in trade was linked to rather a high pace of industry and increasing export-import operations (goods imports grew by 55.3% in January-June).

Danylyshyn said that GVA growth of 8.3% in transport and communications (5.3% in January-August 2007) had been seen, first and foremost, at the expense of high demand on the part of major branches consuming the services of these kinds of economic activity (processing industry, metallurgy, machine building).

He said that GVA growth of 7.3% in processing industry had been stipulated by high investment activity keeping growth in machine building (23.7%), extending national customer demand owing to the stable rise in real disposable personal income (13.7% in January-July) and growing external demand that triggered an increase in export activities (goods exports rose by 40.7% in the first half of 2008).

Ukraine saw 0.1% deflation in August this year and inflation of 14.8% since the beginning of 2008.