{{Germany posted strong growth in the first quarter of the year in stark contrast with France: the euro zone’s second largest economy failed to expand at all and Italy, the third largest, went into reverse.}}<\/p>\n
German quarterly growth of 0.8% marginally exceeded forecasts and was double the pace at the end of 2013. France was expected to pale in comparison but had still been forecast to grow by 0.2%.<\/p>\n
Inventory changes and public spending were the only factors which kept the French economy from contracting while Germany’s performance was driven largely by domestic demand.<\/p>\n
The figure for the euro zone as a whole is due at 0900 GMT and forecast to show growth of 0.4% on the quarter.<\/p>\n
France will now need 0.5% growth each quarter to meet a government forecast for subdued 1% growth in 2014, Natixis Asset Management chief economist Philippe Waechter said.<\/p>\n
“France’s public finance plan has been built on the 1% growth forecast. If we don’t achieve it France will not meet its (debt and deficit) targets for 2014 and 2015,” Waechter said.<\/p>\n
France is not the only euro zone member in the doldrums.<\/p>\n
Italian gross domestic product contracted unexpectedly by 0.1%, denting a fragile recovery begun at the end of last year when the country finally put an end to its longest recession since World War Two. Growth of 0.2% had been forecast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Germany posted strong growth in the first quarter of the year in stark contrast with France: the euro zone’s second largest economy failed to expand at all and Italy, the third largest, went into reverse.}} German quarterly growth of 0.8% marginally exceeded forecasts and was double the pace at the end of 2013. France was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000052196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-14452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000052196,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14452.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14452.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14452.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14452.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14452.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton14452.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000052196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14452"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=14452"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=14452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}