Italy's economy bottoms out in early 2019 - industry lobby

Italy's economic contraction may have bottomed out in the first months of 2019 but the outlook for the euro zone's third-largest economy remains weak, national industry lobby Confindustria said on Friday.

Italian gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.1 percent in each of the last two quarters of 2018, putting the economy in a shallow recession.

"Italian GDP in the early months of 2019, as expected, has stopped shrinking. But the scenario at the beginning of the second quarter remains fragile and uncertain," Confindustria said in its monthly newsletter.