Southern Italy's GDP fell 4% in 2013 - update

(ANSA) - Rome, June 6 - The long recession that Italy is still struggling to recover from has hit the country's less wealthy southern regions much harder than the rest of the nation, Istat said Friday. The national statistics agency said it estimated that southern Italy's gross domestic product fell 4% in 2013, more than twice the national average of 1.9%.
    Istat said that the "dynamics" of the recession were "different at the regional level" even though GDP fell everywhere last year.
    While the south suffered most, GDP in central Italy dropped 1.8%, while it fell 1.5% in the north-east and 0.6% in the north-west. Italy looked to have come out of its longest postwar recession when it posted a rise in GDP of 0.1% in the last quarter of 2013.
    But recovery hopes were dented last month when Istat said GDP actually shrank by 0.1% in the first three months of this year, rather than increase as had been expected.