- Dennis de Jong, UFX.com
According to the Eurostat release, the EU's the Euro zone GDP expanded by 0.3% in line with economists expectations. Following increase equals 1.8 and 1.6% compared to the same period during the previous year. Meanwhile, growth was 0.5% in both zones for the first half of 2016. Romania confirmed 1.5% while Hungary 1.0% showing highest growth while France, Italy and Finland, in turn, stagnated. Also, the report from Eurostat showed that weakness in domestic demand was behind the slowdown in the second quarter. Moreover, gross investment was relatively flat following a revised 0.4% increase in the first quarter, while consumer spending added 0.2% and government consumption advanced 0.2%.
In the meantime, despite the European Central Bank decision to adopt negative deposit rates just over two years ago, and quantitative easing over a year ago, Euro zone inflation remains at extremely low levels. During the previous week, core consumer price inflation equals 0.8% on a yearly period, less than half the ECB's target of near 2%. Also, the Euro zone unemployment remains steady for the third month in-a-row in July, being at 10.1%.
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