Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, including the latest eurozone growth figures * Latest: Eurozone growth weakens to 0.1% * Table: How Germany compare with UK, US.... * Breaking: German GDP flatlined in October-December * German economy only grew 0.6% in 2019 * ING: Germany at risk of recession 12.49pm GMT BACK IN THE UK, SUPERMARKET CHAIN TESCO HAS BEEN BLASTED BY REGULATORS FOR UNLAWFULLY BLOCKING ITS RIVALS FROM OPENING STORES. It’s unacceptable that Tesco had these unlawful restrictions in place for up to a decade. By making it harder for other supermarkets to open stores next to its branches, shoppers could have lost out. In the future, we want the ability to fine businesses if we find that they are in breach of our orders. That’s why we’ve called on the Government for more powers. 12.26pm GMT BACK IN THE DEBT CRISIS, SOME OF EUROPE’S SMALLER COUNTRIES WERE THE BLACK SHEEP OF THE EURO-FLOCK. Today, these peripheral nations are driving growth, as France and Italy shrink and Germany stagnates. Barret Kupelian, senior economist at PwC, says the periphery are the euro area’s bright spot: “Today’s country breakdown of Eurozone’s GDP growth showed us that the bloc grew by 1.2% in 2019. This rate of expansion is comparable to that of the UK. The US economy, however, grew by 2.3% in 2019, which is around double the rate of the Eurozone and the UK” The Eurozone performance can be mainly explained by the poor performance of Germany and Italy, which are its biggest and third largest economies respectively. Size matters when it comes to GDP growth rates - a one percentage point increase in the growth rate of Germany and Italy increases Eurozone GDP by 0.5 percentage points.” “However, the bright spot in the Eurozone continues to lie in the peripheral economies. With the exception of Greece, all of the bailout economies have surpassed pre-crisis output levels and continue to grow at strong rates. In fact, we estimate that the three bailout economies (Spain, Portugal and Cyprus) which reported Q4 2019 output estimates today, grew by 0.6% quarter-on-quarter compared to virtually no growth in the German, French, Italian and Dutch economies in GDP weighted terms (see Figure below).” Continue reading...
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