MOSCOW, August 6 (RIA Novosti) - Italy’s economy is officially in recession, as the country’s GDP continued to decline in the second quarter of 2014, according to a press release from Italy’s National Institute of Statistics (Istat).
“In the second quarter of 2014 the seasonally and calendar adjusted, chained volume measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) decreased by 0.2 percent with respect to the first quarter of 2014 and by 0.3 percent in comparison with the second quarter of 2013,” the press release said.
The press release also points out that there was a decrease in production in all of Italy’s three major economic sectors: agriculture, manufacturing and services.
According to The Wall Street Journal, economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a GDP increase of 0.2 percent from the previous quarter.
The figures give little hope for any kind of recovery for the third-largest economy in the European Union in 2014.
Italy’s economy contracted from 2008 to 2009 and from 2011 to 2013, in what now appears to be the country’s worst economic slump since World War II.
