S&P: Europe’s Recovery is Slow

A sturdy recovery is still a distant prospect for Europe, despite recent upbeat economic data, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) said on Wednesday.

S&P forecast that the euro zone economy would shrink once again this year, by 0.7 percent, before growing by 0.8 percent in 2014 and 1.3 percent in 2015. Its outlook contrasts with a number of more bullish forecasts for the region, with Goldman Sachs, for example, expecting a smaller contraction of 0.36 percent in 2013, and growth of 0.87 percent next year.

“We see that some of the actors that usually stage a recovery are not yet in place, such as exports, consumer spending, and corporate investment, except to a certain extent in Germany,” said S&P EMEA Chief Economist Jean-Michel Six, in a report entitled “Europe is moving from sub-zero to sub-par growth.”

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