Italy’s economy has fallen back into recession, latest official figures show, after contracting for two quarters in a row.<\/p>\n
GDP, the value of all the country’s goods and services, shrank 0.2% in the second quarter of the year.<\/p>\n
The surprisingly weak number follows a 0.1% contraction in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Economists consider two quarters of shrinking GDP means a country is in recession.<\/p>\n
At the end of last year the country appeared to be emerging from recession, growing fractionally in the last three months.<\/p>\n
But since then the numbers have been getting worse.<\/p>\n
Speaking before the release of the latest figures, Hetal Mehta, European economist with Legal & General Investment Management, told the BBC: “Italy has a huge pile of government debt and they need growth to bring that debt stock down, so having such weak growth figures is a major setback.”<\/p>\n
But the Bank of Italy said last month that GDP had contracted by 9% since the global financial crisis began in 2007.<\/p>\n
Separate figures showed industrial output increased by 0.9% from May to June, the biggest increase in five months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Italy’s economy has fallen back into recession, latest official figures show, after contracting for two quarters in a row. GDP, the value of all the country’s goods and services, shrank 0.2% in the second quarter of the year. The surprisingly weak number follows a 0.1% contraction in the first quarter. Economists consider two quarters of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-15740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053414,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15740.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15740.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15740.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15740.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15740.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15740.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15740","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15740"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=15740"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=15740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}