Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Euro zone Q2 GDP growth confirmed at 0.9 pct vs Q1; Q3, Q4 forecasts cut

Euro zone GDP growth grew 0.9 pct in the second quarter from the first, and was up 2.7 pct year-on-year, the EU statistics office said. The quarter-on-quarter figure was unchanged from Eurostat's previous estimate published on Sept 1, but the annual rate was revised from 2.6 pct. Meanwhile, the European Commission cut its euro zone GDP growth forecast for the third quarter to a range of 0.4 to 0.8 pct from its projection of 0.3 to 0.9 pct published on Aug 14. It also lowered its forecast for fourth-quarter GDP growth to 0.2 to 0.7 pct from 0.2 to 0.8 pct. The commission forecast first-quarter GDP growth of 0.0 to 0.5 pct. Among the components of second-quarter GDP, Eurostat revised export growth to 1.2 pct from 1.3 pct, but confirmed the rise in imports at 1.2 pct. It also confirmed that growth in household consumption slowed to 0.3 pct from 0.7 pct.

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