“Euro-area exports fell in the fourth quarter for the first time in more than three years and investment declined as the sovereign debt crisis pushed the region deeper into a recession.
Shipments from the euro area dropped 0.9 percent in the last three months of 2012, helping to drive gross domestic product down 0.6 percent, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Exports last declined in the second quarter of 2009. Imports also fell 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter.
“Real economic activity is yet to show major improvement in many countries and it looks highly likely that growth will remain a major struggle for the euro zone for some time to come,”Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight in London, wrote in a note today.
The 17-nation currency bloc’s economy recorded a third straight decline in the fourth quarter, a trend that will continue in the first three months of 2013, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists. The European Commission sees the economy shrinking 0.3 percent this year.
The European Central Bank will maintain its benchmark interest rate at 0.75 percent tomorrow with the euro area mired in a recession and political instability in Italy after an inconclusive election, according to a separate Bloomberg survey. The ECB will also update its economic forecasts.
