German economy sees weakest growth since 2013

The German economy grew by 0.6% last year, according to official figures, its weakest performance since 2013.
The German statistics office said growth was driven mainly by household spending.
Business investment in machinery and equipment was weaker, however. Exports did grow but more slowly than in previous years.
Industrial production, excluding construction, fell by 0.5%.
The statistics office has not yet published full data for the final quarter of last year, but has enough information to assess the impact on the year as a whole.
Claus Vistesen, of Pantheon Macroeconomics, says growth in the final three months of last year was likely to have been about 0.1% to 0.2%.
That follows very weak growth in the third quarter and a small decline in economic activity in the three months period before that.
Those previous quarterly figures showed Germany avoided a recession last year in the sense of two consecutive quarters of contraction.
But they, and the new figures for the full year, show Europe's largest economy struggling to generate growth.