Euro zone economic growth slowed down a touch in the third quarter of 2000, but still outpaced that in the United States, data released by the European Union's statistical office Eurostat showed today.
It left data for gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the 11-nation area unrevised from its initial estimate at 0.7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 3.4 percent year-on-year, in line with analysts' expectations.
This was below upwardly revised second quarter growth rates of 0.9 percent and 3.8 percent respectively. Eurostat had originally reported a quarterly rate of plus 0.8 percent and a yearly rate of plus 3.7 percent.
At 3.4 pecent, the euro zone's third quarter yearly rate of growth was above the U.S. rate of expansion of 2.2 percent registered in the same quarter of last year.
The good news is that we still have euro zone growth above that of the United States, said Jeremy Hawkins, chief economic advisor at Bank of America in London.
On the basis of what we've seen so far, we are going to see EMU-11 GDP growth at 0.4/0.5 percent in Q4. Of countries whose data was available, Finland's economy grew by 1.7 percent, the fastest rate in the euro zone area, while Belgium lagged behind the other euro-members, expanding by a mere 0.4 percent. Data for Ireland, Portugal, Austria and Luxembourg were not given.
Eurostat said a 1.3 percent quarterly growth in investments and an acceleration to 3.0 percent in exports were the main driving forces behind the area's economic expansion in Q3.
The highest rate of growth was among business activities and financial services, which grew by 1.4 percent quarter-on-quarter. Households final consumption expenditure recorded a slowdown to 0.3 percent compared to 0.7 percent in the previous quarter.
Eurostat said the data included a downward revision of French third quarter GDP.