Euro Area Flash GDP Estimate For Q4 2013 Better Than Expected

Euro Zone Economy — An excavator operates at the open-cast Garzweiler brown coal mine of German power supplier RWE some 300m near the village of Borschemich west of Cologne, on Dec. 12, 2013. Reuters

A flash estimate for quarterly growth in Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, in Europe showed that the economy grew by 0.3 percent in the 17-nation zone area and by 0.4 percent in the 28-nation European Union, or EU.

Official data released Friday by Eurostat also showed that seasonally-adjusted GDP growth in these two blocs was estimated to be at 0.5 percent in the euro area and at 1 percent in the EU, compared with the fourth quarter of 2012.

Consensus estimates had pegged quarterly GDP growth in the euro area at 0.2 percent, and annual growth at 0.4 percent. However, over all of 2013, GDP fell by 0.4 percent in the euro area while it rose by 0.1 percent in the EU.

These figures may be revised when the second estimate of the GDP is released on March 5.