By DAVID ROMAN for the WALL STREET JOURNAL
MADRID—Spain's economy bounced back slightly in the fourth quarter, but contracted for the whole of last year and is still growing at a slow pace, official data showed Friday.
Gross domestic product in the euro zone's fourth-largest economy rose 0.2% in the fourth quarter from the third quarter, the INE statistics institute said in its first estimate of gross domestic product for the quarter.
Compared with the year-earlier period, growth was up 0.6%, the fastest rate since the third quarter of 2008, when Spain's economy went into a tailspin amid a massive real estate bust, but still a low rate compared with the rest of the euro zone and the developed world. For the whole of 2010, the economy contracted 0.1%.
Lavinia Santovetti, a Nomura economist, said quarterly growth—in line with an earlier Bank of Spain estimate—was slightly above expectations for a 0.1% increase, and was probably driven by an increase in exports as Spanish markets in the euro zone and the U.S. recover, coupled with weak imports as domestic demand remains subdued.
INE will publish full fourth-quarter GDP numbers on Feb. 16., with a GDP breakdown.
Ms. Santovetti added that the Spanish number doesn't change Nomura's forecast for 0.4% euro-zone growth in the fourth quarter from the third quarter. Overall euro-zone data will be released on Feb. 15.
Spain's economic growth was flat in the third quarter, compared with the second quarter.
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