LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, June 9 (UPI) -- Slovenia's economy declined at an annual rate of 8.5 percent in the first quarter, mainly due to a 21 percent drop in exports, the statistics office said.
This is the biggest contraction since the nation joined the European Union in 2004 and it formally qualifies Slovenia as a country in recession with two quarters of economic decline in a row, the Ljubljana news agency STA reported Tuesday.
Slovenia's gross domestic product in the last quarter of 2008 dropped at an annual rate of 0.8 percent.
Economic experts forecast Slovenia's GDP will drop 3.5 percent for all of 2009, instead of a previous projection of 2.5 percent.
The Slovenian GDP in the first three months of this year dropped 6.4 percent when compared to the last quarter of 2008 and it shrank 8.5 percent when compared with the first quarter last year, the state statistics institute said.
