Economic confidence in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) weakened for the first time in five months in April, mainly reflecting the rising uncertainty regarding the future of the Eurozone debt crisis, data from a survey by the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the Erste Group Bank showed Thursday.
The headline economic sentiment indicator, a measure of experts' expectations of the region's economy, decreased by 20.4 points sequentially to 29.5 points in April, marking the first fall in the past five months.
The indicator, however, remained clearly in the positive territory. The downturn in sentiment was widespread, with only Hungary recording improvement in expectations.
At the same time, the indicator that measures the current economic situation in the CEE region decreased by 11.3 points to 6 points during the month.
The indicator of expectations for the Eurozone economy recorded a sharp fall of 25.1 points month-on-month in April, data showed.
The CEE region observed in the survey comprises Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and since October 2010 Turkey.
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