Calculations of Denmark’s GDP by national agency Statistics Denmark show that the economy grew by 3.6 percent last year.

While the beginning of 2022 was affected by post-Covid economic recovery, the result shows that the Danish economy coped with other challenges presented during the year, an expert said.

“Corona restrictions affected the beginning of the year and were replaced by huge economic uncertainty and energy crisis after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with increasing inflation and interest rates resulting,” Lisette Rosenbeck Christensen, senior economist with Arbejdernes Landsbank, told news wire Ritzau.

“These are just some of the challenges that the Danish economy met in 2022. Nevertheless, the economy is stronger and bigger on the other side. That is quite simply impressive,” she said.

The economy grew by 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter of last year alone. But a closer look shows this figure could be misleading, a second analyst said.

“The high growth at the end of 2022 unfortunately appears to be a mirage if you look a little closer at today’s figures,” Tore Stramer, senior economist with the Danish Chamber of Commerce, said.

“The high GDP growth is primarily driven by the pharmaceutical industry and the purchase of a patent which gave rise to a very large advance in gross investments,” he said.

“Production in the pharmaceutical industry alone increased by 46 percent in December last year, which is very extraordinary,” he said.

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