VILNIUS — It appears the Lithuanian government’s vision of an export-driven recovery may come to pass.

In a break from earlier less optimistic projections, the International Monetary Fund is now predicting a 2.1 percent year-on-year increase in gross domestic product for the hard-hit Baltic country, which experienced one of the worst recessions worldwide in 2009.

“Lithuania is now benefiting from the global recovery,” the IMF said. “Recent data are encouraging with signs that an economic recovery is starting to take hold.”

However, the IMF predicts that the economy will only return to pre-crisis production levels in 2014 or 2015, which begs the question some economists have pointed to as to whether the country would be better off if the “Baltic Tiger” boom in the early part of the decade would’ve never happened at all, despite the flood of capital, jobs and wage increases it brought.

“While the credit booms generated strong growth during the boom-phase, the subsequent bust has been so deep that seen over the 2003–10 period countries with the strongest credit boom have seen slower average GDP growth than countries that did not experience this boom,” a recent IMF paper by economists Bas B. Bakker and Anne-Marie Gulde reads.

Exactly how much Lithuania recovers is likely to depend on the recovery of its primary trade partners, which include the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Germany and Poland.

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