Euro zone first-quarter economic surge is stronger than anticipated

In the first quarter, the euro zone economy rallied more than anticipated in the first quarter, bouncing off a dive in the second half of last year, while unemployment headed south to its lowest value for more than ten years, as Tuesday’s data revealed.

However, financial analysts told that the numbers gave the ECB minor indication of whether to proceed with stimulating surge with loose monetary policy or to get down to tightening.

Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office informed that as follows from a preliminary forecast GDP in the 19 EU countries went up by 0.4% quarter-on-quarter for the first three months of this year, soaring from 0.2% in the fourth quarter of last year and 0.1% in the third quarter.

Year-on-year, euro zone GDP headed north by 1.2%, which is the same rally as in the last quarter of the previous year. The Eurostat data comes with a forecast by Germany of first-quarter GDP surge in Europe's number one economy that hasn’t been uncovered yet.

Financial analysts had hoped for a 0.3% quarterly rally as well as a 1.1% annual expansion.

GDP surge should hover about 0.3% in the remainder of 2019, which is below ECB as well as European Commission estimates of surge at 0.4% in the second half of this year.

The ECB that put off tightening monetary policy at the end of 2018 against the backdrop of persistently dismal inflation, had anticipated the first-quarter surge of 0.2%, speeding up to 0.3% in the second quarter.

Additionally, Eurostat told that euro zone unemployment went down to 7.7% of the workforce last month with 12.630 million folks looking for jobs, which is the lowest rate since September 2008, versus 7.8% of the workforce or 12.804 million employees in February.