Sri Lanka statistics office withdraws GDP data

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's Department of Census and Statistics withdrew its 2017 full-year and fourth quarter gross domestic product data on Friday, a day after posting the island nation's worst economic growth in 16 years.

The data on Thursday showed the economy expanding 3.1 percent in 2017, the slowest pace in 16 years and decelerating from 4.4 percent in 2016. It showed fourth-quarter growth slowing to 1.4 percent year-on-year from 3.74 percent in the third quarter.

"We got the last set of data at the last minute. We released the GDP data, but since this is last quarter we need to calculate the full year data and revisions," A.J. Satharasinghe, director general at the state-run Department of Census and Statistics, told Reuters.

"It's a long process. So we withdrew the data as we can't allow even a slight mistake in the data. We are recalculating and compiling everything. We will release the data in one or two days."

The central bank last month had expected growth to have fallen to around 4 percent last year, due to prolonged drought, intermittent floods and tight monetary and fiscal policies.

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Andrew Roche)