Danske new forecasts for the Baltics

Today, Danske Bank has issued new macroeconomic forecasts for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Shortly, Danske predicts 2,5% GDP growth for Estonia for 2008 and 3% for 2009. They also estimate that currently the long term trend growth rate for Estonia should be around 3-4% due to high imbalances in the economy. For Latvia, Danske has even gloomier picture with 2-3% GDP growth for this year and 2% in 2009.
Lithuania is expected to grow 5% in 2008 and 4% in 2009. To me it seems that the main reason for higher forecasts for Lithuania is that the slowdown started later there, so the forecasts might come down as they have for Estonia and Lithuania. 5% seems especially optimistic after the -0,2% growth in Q1 of 2008.

One interesting graph i found was the share of private consumption in GDP:
Estonia:










Latvia:

Lithuania:


I never thought that the private consumption is that much smaller in Estonia than in neighbouring countries and that it has been actually falling during last 5 years (which is quite different from the other Baltic States). If it is really so, that should mean that less money has spent on pointless TV-sets and restaurant bills in Estonia and more has been invested...
But this is just one piece of the whole picture and i really don't know what to think about it yet. Just interesting...