2023-10-31 13:50:14
The GDP of the eurozone has contracted by 0.1% during the third quarter of this year, which represents a drop of three tenths compared to the 0.2% growth registered between April and June. Therefore, the euro zone is facing a technical recession – two consecutive quarters with falls in its GDP – after a quarter dominated by inflation that continues to fall – to 2.9% in October – and in which the European Central Bank (ECB) has decided to pause its interest rate increases, leaving the price of money at 4.50% for now. This is the first drop in quarterly GDP since the second quarter of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic.
According to preliminary data from the community statistics office Eurostat, in the European Union as a whole, GDP grew by 0.1% between July and September, after stagnation in the second quarter. Compared to the same quarter of 2022, the GDP of the euro zone expanded by 0.5% and that of the community club, by 0.4%. We must go back to the second quarter of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, to find a period of GDP contraction in the euro zone (-11.3%), although the preliminary data for the first quarter of this year pointed to a drop of 0 .1% which was later raised to 0% in a subsequent review.
Among the EU countries for which data were available, the highest quarterly pace of progress was recorded by Latvia (0.6%) and France (0.1%). On the contrary, the countries with the worst performance in the quarter were Ireland (-1.8%), Austria (-0.6%) and the Czech Republic (-0.3%). In the case of Spain, GDP growth in the third quarter moderated to 0.3% from 0.4% in the second and 0.6% in the first three months of 2023. Germany was the only one of the large economies of the bloc that registered negative economic growth between July and September (-0.1%), after starting the year with a rate of 0% between January and March and a slight expansion in the following three months of 0.1% .
In year-on-year terms, the Spanish economy experienced growth of 1.8% in the third quarter compared to the same period of the previous year, which is 1.7 points more than the average for the Eurozone and the European Union (EU). ) and the second highest value of all Member States after Portugal, which grew by 0.9%. The data point to little growth in the European economy in the third quarter of the year, after having grown 0.5% in the Eurozone and 0.4% in the European Union (EU) in the previous quarter. The economy only advanced compared to the same quarter last year in five countries of the 13 countries that provided data. Following Spain and Portugal were Belgium (+1.5%), France (+0.7%) and Latvia (0.6%). The biggest falls were in Ireland (-4.7%), Estonia (-2.5%), Austria and Sweden (-1.2%).
The community statistics office reminds that the data is preliminary and is based on sources that are “incomplete” and “subject to further revision.”
#GDP #eurozone #accelerates #slowdown #contracts #tenth