Economic confidence in Europe is growing
Expectations of consumers and business prospects for the eurozone economy continued to become more optimistic, since exports and trade have increased thanks to the recovery of the global economy. The index of economic sentiment in the euro area increased for the tenth consecutive month in January and its value reached 95.7 points to 94.1 points in December.
The data surprised market analysts who had expected a modest increase in the measure to 92.3 percentage points compared to the initially announced the December value of 91.3 points, forward Bloomberg.
Many European companies plan to increase production this year to meet growing demand. As a result, utilization of available generation capacity in the eurozone rose for the second consecutive quarter. It reached 72.4 percent of available capacity for the last three months of 2009 compared to 71% on the previous quarter.
Good data on business confidence in the euro area, however, was marred by news that the number of unemployed in Germany rose for the first time in seven months in December. This is due to the slow economic recovery for the country and unusually cold weather in January.
The number of unemployed increased by 6 thousand in December to 3.43 million. Expectations were for more than 15 thousand increase in unemployment rate in Europe’s largest economy rose by 8.1 percent in November to 8.2 percent in December.
Economists attributed the increase in unemployment in Germany in the cold weather, causing the closure of a significant number of jobs in construction and other sectors of the economy.
Program of the German government to promote employment enable the country to avoid a large increase in unemployment. Cabinet to extend the program by one year from January 1, 2010 Nearly 1 million people in Germany were employed part-time thanks to this program over the past few months.
To stimulate economic recovery, the German government approved tax breaks for another 8.5 billion euros this year. Thus the total amount at the beginning of the crisis rose to 24 billion euros.
The rate of the euro against the U.S. dollar decreased by 0.2 percent since the beginning of today’s foreign exchange session. At 14:00 pm local time on One euro is exchanged for 1.3997 dollars.
