Italy's GDP in 2006, when corrected for the number of working days, jumped 2% over the previous year, its strongest gain since 2000 when GDP leapt 3%, national statistics bureau Istat reported on Tuesday.
GDP in the last quarter of the year climbed 1.1% over the previous three months and was 2.9% higher than the fourth quarter of 2005, Istat added.
The 1.1% gain in the fourth quarter, Istat observed, was the highest quarterly gain in GDP since the fourth quarter of 1999, when it climbed by 1.3%.
The 2.9% year-on-year quarter gain, on the other hand, was the best since GDP jumped 3.3% in the first quarter of 2001,
In 2005, Italy's GDP fell by 0.1% when adjusted for working days, after showing zero growth when unadjusted.
In its latest forecast, the Italian government had predicted that Italy's GDP last year would have risen by 1.6%.
