Official figures show that between 2004 and 2008 Kyiv's economy outstripped the rest of the country's, growing by an annual average of 11.5%. Following the global financial crisis that began in 2007, Kyiv's economy suffered a severe setback in 2009 with gross regional product contracting by 13.5% in real terms. Although a record high, the decline in activity was 1.6 percentage points smaller than that for the country as a whole. The economy in Kyiv, as in the rest of Ukraine, recovered somewhat in 2010 and 2011. Kyiv is a middle-income city, with prices comparable to many mid-size American cities (i.e., considerably lower than Western Europe).