ROME, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- Italy on Friday adjusted its official data on the growth of the country's economy downward, stating the Italian gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.6 percent in the second quarter of the year, a significant drop from preliminary estimates of 0.9 percent released a month ago.
ISTAT, Italy's National Statistics Institute, said the Italian economy was 0.2 percent larger than it was in the first quarter of the year and 0.6 percent bigger than in the second quarter of 2023.
On Sept. 2, ISTAT's provisional data showed the same 0.2-percent quarter-on-quarter figure, but it estimated the economy had grown by 0.9 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier.
ISTAT said the adjustments were made for technical reasons, without elaborating.
With the changes, the total growth figure for the first half of the year is adjusted downward to 0.4 percent compared to 0.6 percent in the preliminary estimates, putting pressures on the country's target of 1.0 percent for all of 2024, though ISTAT did not revise its growth estimates for the full year.
With the lower figure for the second quarter, it means that Italy's economy matched the growth rate for the 20-nation euro currency zone in the second quarter of the year rather than surpassing it. Italy's year-on-year growth rate of 0.6 percent in the first quarter of the year still surpassed the rate of 0.5 percent for the euro currency zone.
