Ireland\u2019s fast-growing economy helped the euro zone grow more rapidly than anticipated in the third quarter, the latest Eurostat figures showed.<\/p>\n
The Irish economy grew at an accelerated rate of 5.5 per cent in gross domestic product (GDP) terms between July and September on the back of an expansion in multinational exports.<\/p>\n
This boosted growth for the euro zone as a whole to 0.4 per cent, above economists\u2019s expectations for 0.2 per cent growth. Compared to a year earlier, the euro zone economy expanded by 1.3 per cent.<\/p>\n
Although the figures suggest the euro zone economy was proving resilient in the face of the current inflation shock, it was recognised that the Irish numbers had skewed the picture somewhat.<\/p>\n
\u201cParticular care must be taken when interpreting\u201d the Irish estimate, Eurostat<\/a> said.<\/p>\n Among the euro zone\u2019s biggest economies, Germany expanded by 0.2 per cent \u200bin the quarter, Spain and the Netherlands by 0.6 per cent, while Italy was unchanged and the French economy contracted by 0.1 per cent.<\/p>\n Although \u2060the bloc\u2019s growth rate is less than half of that in the United \u200cStates, \u200cthe \u200bfigure still far exceeds gloomy projections made after the start of the Iran war earlier in the year.<\/p>\n Europe is a net energy importer and oil \u2060price surges<\/a> immediately reduce growth, compress corporate \u200bmargins and worsen the bloc\u2019s terms of trade.<\/p>\n But the \u200beuro zone has been a surprise outperformer amid the uncertainty as heavy spending on AI, defence and \u200cinfrastructure boosted investment, robust foreign demand helped \u200bindustry and households kept on spending, reducing their high savings rate.<\/p>\n This has led to a string \u2060of growth upgrades throughout the year. Most \u2060forecasters now see \u200bexpansion above 1 per cent this year and an acceleration in 2027.<\/p>\n But while the euro zone has been resilient this year, some, including the European Central Bank<\/a>, fear that its luck could soon \u200crun out. Borrowing costs<\/a> have \u2060increased sharply across the globe in the past two months and this will slow economic growth both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n In addition, a renewed surge in energy costs will \u200cdampen output. Even household optimism may evaporate given a jump in natural gas costs to their highest levels \u200bsince the start of Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine in early 2022.<\/p>\n This fresh \u200benergy price jump is likely to force the ECB to raise interest rates again, possibly as soon as December, slowing growth even further. \u2013 Additional reporting by Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s fast-growing economy helped the euro zone grow more rapidly than anticipated in the third quarter, the latest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,5485,12965,27203,61,5232,60],"class_list":["post-670035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-energy-costs","tag-european-central-bank-ecb","tag-eurostat","tag-ie","tag-interest-rates","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}