Industrial production in Europe continued its downward creep in November, falling by 0.1 per cent - its third consecutive monthly decrease - amid enduring fears of a recession, data released on Thursday showed, dpa reported. It also offered a bleaker picture for October, with the contraction for that month revised downwards from 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent by the European Union's statistics agency, Eurostat. The numbers were the same for both the 27-member EU and the 17-member eurozone. "The highly cyclical industrial sector is suffering from the slowdown in activity," analysts at the BNP Paribas banking group had noted ahead of the data release. "Businesses, under an unusual high level of uncertainty and tight financial and monetary conditions, are postponing their investment decisions, with negative effects on industrial output," they added. The November decrease was, however, slightly less pronounced than forecast by analysts, who had expected a 0.3-per-cent fall for the eurozone. But any contraction would add "to evidence that the wider economy may have re-entered recession," Ben May of the Capital Economics research group had warned. The year-on-year figures did fall short of expectations, with industrial production in the eurozone down 0.3 per cent, as compared to November 2010. Analysts had predicted a 0.2-per-cent increase. In the wider EU, industrial production was down 0.2 per cent year-on-year, Eurostat said.
