The German economy, Europe's biggest, braved global economic storms to expand 1.5 per cent in 2014, better than the government had expected, a flash estimate says.
And Germany's public finances were in order too, with the overall public budget showing a surplus equivalent to 0.4 per cent of gross domestic product, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement.
"On the whole, the German economy turned out to be stable on an annual average in 2014," the statement said.
At 1.5 per cent, GDP growth was "above the average of the last 10 years of 1.2 per cent," the statisticians said.
The government had been pencilling in growth of 1.2 per cent for 2014.
In the preceding two years, the German economy had clocked up only very modest growth of 0.4 per cent in 2012 and a meagre 0.1 per cent in 2013.
"Obviously, the German economy turned out to be strong in a difficult global economic environment, benefiting especially from a strong domestic demand," Destatis chief Roderich Egeler told a news conference.
"The economic situation had stabilised towards the end of 2014, following a dynamic start into the year and the subsequent period of weakness last summer," he said.
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