KIEV, Aug. 16 – Ukraine’s economy, helped by strong steel prices, expanded robustly in the second quarter, the State Statistics Committee reported Monday.

The economy expanded 6% on the year in the second quarter, accelerating growth compared with 4.9% expansion recorded in the first quarter, the committee said.

Although the second quarter growth appears to be less than 6.3% that has been last month estimated by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, the figure is still much greater than what the government had originally forecast.