5. The exit and post-mortem
The stimulus programme worked. It produced growth and jobs, the two ingredients for stability that the top leaders most urgently sought. Growth began to pick up in 2009, accelerating through the year. Quarterly growth rose from 5.3% in Q1 to 5.7% in Q2, 8.6% in Q3 and 13% in Q4 (Figure 3 above). For the whole year, it reached 8.7% – comfortably above the 8% that has long been considered the minimum required to keep economic problems from spilling over into social problems. This was an impressive achievement in the face of collapsing exports, which had contributed a shocking –3.7% to overall growth in 2009 (equal to –41% of total growth), after falling to 0.8% in 2008 from 2.5% in 2007 (Figure 8).