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Business Today
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Eurozone economy: French growth slows to 0.1%
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Eurozone economy: French growth slows to 0.1%
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, including the latest eurozone GDP and inflation report
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Today's agenda
Today we get a detailed healthcheck on the eurozone economy, with the latest GDP and inflation data from across the single currency bloc.

And the first word comes from France, where growth has slowed sharply in the last quarter in the face of high interest rates, cost of living pressures and a weak global economy.

French GDP expanded by just 0.1% in the third quarter of 2023, a slowdown on the upwardly revised 0.6% growth recorded in April-June.

Statistics body INSEE reports that foreign trade shrank in July-September, with exports shrinking faster than imports.

It says: "Against this backdrop, foreign trade contributed negatively to GDP growth this quarter (‑0.3 points after ‑0.1 points)."

Companies also ran down their inventories of stocks, which had a negative impact on growth.

But on the upside, domestic demand made a positive contribution to growth, driven by household spending and company investment.

That’s a better performance than Germany, which we learned yesterday shrank by 0.1% in July-September.

We’ll get GDP data from Italy and Portugal later this morning, ahead of the eurozone-wide report at 10am, plus new stats on the cost of living.

The eurozone is not expected to have grown in the last quarter, as Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, explains: "On the wider EU measure the economy is expected to have slowed to 0% in Q3 from 0.1%, meaning that over the last 4 quarters we’ve seen little to no growth at all.

"Inflation is also expected to have slowed sharply with French CPI for October expected to have slowed to 4.5% from 5.7% on an annualised basis. EU flash CPI is expected to have similarly slowed from 4.3% to 3.1%, with core prices forecast to remain a little stickier at 4.2%, down from 4.5%."

The agenda
• 7.45am BST: French inflation report for October
• 8am BST: Czech Republic Q3 GDP report
• 9am BST: Italian Q3 GDP report
• 9.30am BST: Portuguese Q3 GDP report
• 10am BST: Eurozone flash Q3 GDP report
• 10am BST: Eurozone inflation report for October
• 12.30pm BST: Canadian August GDP report
• 1pm BST: US house price index for August

We’ll be tracking all the main events throughout the day ...
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