💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 5232.gmi captured on 2023-06-14 at 15:25:39. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2014-11-04 08:36:45
The economy of the 18-country strong eurozone will grow by just 0.8% this year,
the European Commission has said.
The forecast is below the 1.2% estimate made earlier this year. The commission
has also has cut its growth forecast for 2015 to 1.1% from 1.7%.
EU vice president Jyrki Katainen said "the economic and employment situation is
not improving fast enough".
The report predicts that inflation in the eurozone will continue to be low and
employment high.
Continuing weakness in France and Italy would keep the brakes on recovery, it
said.
The EU executive said the eurozone's economy would not now reach a growth rate
of 1.7% until 2016.
line
Andrew Walker, BBC economics correspondent, writes:
The new forecasts do still predict slightly faster growth next year and a
further acceleration in 2016. The report says that economic reforms are
starting to bear fruit. The low interest rates and other steps taken by the
European Central Bank (ECB) will also help as will the strengthening of the
banks, following the ECB's recent assessment of their financial health. But the
forecast growth is very modest.
line
The director general of the commission's economics department, Marco Buti, said
the roots of the eurozone's troubles were in the global credit crunch of 2008.
"The slowdown in Europe has occurred as the legacy of the global financial and
economic crisis lingers," he said.
"We see growth... coming to a stop in Germany... protracted stagnation in
France and contraction in Italy."
The eurozone's woes are also central to the recovery in the rest of the world.
Both the UK and the US, whose economies have been picking up, are being held
back by slow demand in the eurozone.
Eurozone inflation is forecast to be 0.5% this year, 0.8% in 2015 and 1.5% in
2016, While this is well below the European Central Bank's target of close to
2%, it means that deflation, considered at least as dangerous as high
inflation, should be averted.