PARIS: French industrial production beat expectations for January, with a 0.4% rise from December. Analysts were expecting a 0.3% drop, after December’s 1.4% jump.
France and Italy, the second and third biggest economies in the eurozone, have industrial production data out. In short, France’s was promising and Italy’s was very bad.
In January, Italian industrial output dropped 0.7% from December. Economists had expected a 0.2% jump. With a series of revisions, that leaves Italian industry producing 2.2% less than it did in January last year, as opposed to the 0.1% rise than analysts forecast.
That’s two solid month-on-month figures for France, which has shown fewer signs of recovery than some of the other eurozone nations.
Pantheon Macroeconomics provides a good chart, showing that although January and December’s month-on-month figures were strong, the year-on-year figures are still pretty tepid, at best, when looking at the past three months:
