| Economy - overview: This thoroughly modern market economy
features high-tech agriculture, up-to-date small-scale and corporate
industry, extensive government welfare measures, comfortable living
standards, and high dependence on foreign trade. Denmark is a net exporter
of food and energy and has a comfortable balance of payments surplus. The
center-left coalition government has reduced the formerly high
unemployment rate and attained a budget surplus as well as followed the
previous government's policies of maintaining low inflation and a stable
currency. The coalition has lowered marginal income tax rates and raised
environmental taxes thus maintaining overall tax revenues. Problems of
bottlenecks, and longer term demographic changes reducing the labor force,
are being addressed through labor market reforms. The government has been
successful in meeting, and even exceeding, the economic convergence
criteria for participating in the third phase (a common European currency)
of the European Monetary Union (EMU), but Denmark, in a September 2000
referendum, reconfirmed its decision not to join the 11 other EU members
in the euro. Even so, the Danish currency remains pegged to the euro.
GDP: purchasing power parity - $136.2 billion (2000 est.)
GDP - real growth rate: 1.3% (1999 est.), 2.8% (2000 est.)
GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $25,500 (2000 est.)
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 3%
industry: 25%
services: 72% (2000 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 2%
highest 10%: 24% (2000 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 2.5% (1999 est.), 2.9% (2000
est.)
Labor force: 2.856 million (2000 est.)
Labor force - by occupation: services 79%, industry 17%,
agriculture 4% (2000 est.)
Unemployment rate: 5.7% (1999 est.), 5.3% (2000)
Budget:
revenues: $52.9 billion
expenditures: $51.3 billion, including capital expenditures
of $500 million (2001 est.)
Industries: food processing, machinery and equipment, textiles and
clothing, chemical products, electronics, construction, furniture, and
other wood products, shipbuilding, windmills.
Industrial production growth rate: 1.5% (1999 est.), 3% (2000 est.)
Electricity - production: 37.885 billion kWh (1999)
Electricity - production by source:
fossil fuel: 88.4%
hydro: 0.07%
nuclear: 0%
other: 11.53% (1999)
Electricity - consumption: 32.916 billion kWh (1999)
Electricity - exports: 7.28 billion kWh (1999)
Electricity - imports: 4.963 billion kWh (1999)
Agriculture - products: grain, potatoes, rape, sugar beets; pork
and beef, dairy products; fish
Exports: $49.5 billion (f.o.b., 1999), $50.8 billion (f.o.b., 2000)
Exports - commodities: machinery and instruments, meat and meat
products, dairy products, fish, chemicals, furniture, ships, windmills
Exports - partners: EU 66.5% (Germany 20.1%, Sweden 11.7%, UK
9.6%, France 5.3%, Netherlands 4.7%), Norway 5.8%, US 5.4% (1999)
Imports: $43.9 billion (f.o.b., 1999), $43.6 billion (f.o.b., 2000)
Imports - commodities: machinery and equipment, raw materials and
semimanufactures for industry, chemicals, grain and foodstuffs, consumer
goods
Imports - partners: EU 72.1% (Germany 21.6%, Sweden 12.4%, UK
8.0%, Netherlands 8.0%, France 5.8%), Norway 4.2%, US 4.5% (1999)
Debt - external: $44 billion (1996 est.), $21.7 billion (2000)
Economic aid - donor: ODA, $1.63 billion (1999)
Currency: Danish krone (DKK)
SOURCE: The World Factbook |