Italy to post modest GDP growth in Q1, says central bank

[ROME] Italy probably posted modest economic growth in the first quarter of this year, the Bank of Italy said on Friday, reinforcing expectations that the country is emerging from three years of recession.

In its quarterly economic bulletin the central bank also said that the European Central Bank's bond buying programme known as quantitative easing should raise Italian inflation by more that 0.5 percentage points in both 2015 and 2016.

"Industrial production has risen modestly, according to our evaluation, in the first months of the year; on the basis of this data gross domestic product in the first quarter increased slightly," the BoI said.

The bulletin also said Italian banks borrowed a total of 93 billion euros of cheap funds from the European Central Bank's targeted lending operations (TLTROs) out of a total of 311 billion euros lent by the ECB to eurozone banks.

REUTERS