MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Euro-zone growth still fragile but stronger than expected at the end of 2013

A strong Euro is still hurting its exporters and governments are more focused on cutting debt than investing

Economic growth across the Euro-zone was stronger than expected at the end of 2013, according to official figures, raising hopes the recovery is gaining a foothold. Gross domestic product grew by 0.3% in the October-December period from the previous quarter, said Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office. That amounts to an annualized rate of about 1.2 %.

 In the third quarter, growth was only 0.1% across the bloc, which counted 17 members before Latvia joined this year.

The Euro-zone’s recovery is important to the world economy as Europeans are big buyers of goods from the United States and Asia. Uncertainty over the bloc’s financial future in recent years weighed on global growth.

The Euro-zone came out of recession at the beginning of 2013 as it started emerging from a five-year financial crisis, but continues to suffer from high unemployment of 12%. A strong Euro is still hurting its exporters and governments are more focused on cutting debt than investing.

The fourth quarter growth - the third consecutive quarter of expansion - beat analysts’ expectations for a rate of 0.2% and eases some of the pressure on the European Central Bank to loosen its monetary policy further. The growth uptick was largely driven by higher than expected activity in the bloc’s biggest economies, Germany, France and Italy.

Italy’s quarterly growth rate of 0.1% marked the country’s first positive growth result since 2011. The stock market in Milan opened higher on the news, even though the country’s Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, resigned.

Germany’s economy grew by 0.4% in the fourth quarter, while France’s saw a rise of 0.3%. Growth in the Netherlands was a strong 0.7%, and the economies in crisis-hit countries like Spain and Portugal also showed new signs of life, growing by 0.3% and 0.4%.

The figures also showed the economy of the wider 28-nation EU, which includes members like Britain that don’t use the Euro, grew by 0.4% compared with the previous quarter.

For the whole of 2013, the figures showed the recovery was still at an early stage. The Euro zone’s GDP fell 0.4%, while the EU’s inched up 0.1%.