Europe’s economic slowdown will remain temporary and growth will pick up from the fourth quarter of this year, RAI reported, citing an interview with European Central Bank (ECB) President Jean-Claude Trichet.
“We have a trough in the second and third quarter this year and after this trough we will have a progressive increase in growth,” Trichet told the Italian broadcaster on Saturday. “We’ll have a gradual recovery in the course of 2009.”
Trichet said the current turbulence in financial markets is “a process going on,” adding that the ECB would “remain very alert permanently.”
Trichet also said that the economic squeeze had “hit rock bottom,” telling Italian television that he expects a “gradual revival” over the course of next year.
“Going by our calculations, just published, during the second and third quarters of this year, we hit rock bottom,” he told RAI 1 on the sidelines of an economic forum attended by political leaders at Lake Como, Italy.
The eurozone economy contracted 0.2 percent in the second quarter of this year and finance ministers from France and Belgium called again last week for the ECB to consider measures that would boost economic activity when it determines the level of interest rates for the zone.
The ECB left its main lending rate unchanged at 4.25 percent on Thursday and Trichet’s comments at a subsequent press conference implied it would remain steady for some time.
He underscored the need to prevent a second round of inflationary pressures that might be created by strong wage demands and said that the current inflation rate of 3.8 percent was worrying.
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