OSLO (AFP) - Norway has seen positive growth rates for four consecutive quarters as industrial production speeds up.

• Norway's sovereign fund swells in value
• Norway's trade surplus dived on lower oil exports

Norway's economy grew 0.5 percent in the second quarter, boosted by its industrial production, Norway Statistics said Thursday easily beating analyst forecasts.

The second quarter growth beat expectations of analysts polled by the Dow Jones Newswires who had expected gross domestic product (GDP) to grow 0.3 percent during the three-month period.

The data covers Norway's mainland GDP, excluding the country's big oil and gas sectors and the shipping industry, and so is considered a better indicator of its underlying economic health.

Statistics Norway noted that the country had now seen "positive growth rates for four consecutive quarters.

"Both manufacturing and service-producing industries showed a marked increase in activity," it said in a statement.

The agency also revised up first quarter growth by 0.1 percentage points to 0.2 percent.

Including oil and gas and shipping meanwhile, Norway's GDP grew just 0.1 percent during the April to June period, Statistics Norway said.

On this measure, it also revised its first quarter reading to 0.2 percent from its previous estimate that Norway's economy shrank 0.1 percent in the three months to March.

Statistics Norway also revised growth figures for the past two years. For 2008, it said mainland GDP grew 1.8 percent, down from the previous estimate of 2.2 percent. For 2009, the economy contracted 1.4 percent, instead of 1.6 percent.

Norway, one of the world's top oil and gas exporters, emerged from the global economic crisis relatively unscathed and in October 2009 its central bank became the first in Europe to raise interest rates since the height of the global financial crisis a year earlier.

Since then, the central bank has raised its key rate twice but the deep debt crisis in a number of other European countries and a slowdown in the US recovery has halted its move towards higher rates since May.