In the first quarter of the current year, Italy's seasonally adjusted and calendar adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.5 percent quarter on quarter and by 2.3 percent year on year, according to the preliminary estimate issued by Istat, Italy's national statistics institute.
The first quarter this year witnessed the seventh consecutive quarter-on-quarter decline in Italian GDP, the longest uninterrupted contraction since Istat began to record the data in 1990.
With a contraction of close to nine percent compared to 2007, Italy's GDP has now regressed to levels seen in 2000.