Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Ukraine’s Economy Enjoys a Hopeful Moment

Unexpectedly fast growth in Q2 may be a fluke, but there are reasons for optimism.

August 15, 2019 at 11:15 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Good news for him.
Photographer: Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

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Nobody expected Ukraine’s economy to grow as fast as it did in the second quarter. Though the growth was driven, in large part, by a bumper wheat harvest, the optimistic numbers can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promises a new kind of politics and investment-friendly change.

Ukraine’s real gross domestic product increased by 4.6% year-on-year in April through June, way above the Bloomberg consensus forecast of 2.6%. It’s the fastest growth since the exceptional third quarter of 2016, when real GDP increased by 4.8%.