The nation's economy shrank at an annualized rate of 3.2 percent in real terms during the October-December quarter of 1998, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of contraction, the Economic Planning Agency announced Friday.
The EPA said that gross domestic product shrank by 0.8 percent in real terms during the quarter compared with the three-month span preceding it. The figures were more dismal than many analysts had expected.
It was the first time that the EPA statistics on real-term growth of GDP -- the total amount of goods and services produced -- posted negative figures for five straight quarters since the agency started compiling data under the current method in 1955, the agency said.