By Brian Love, European Economics Correspondent
PARIS, March 1 (Reuters) - Europe's economy received a boost from export-fuelled manufacturers in February, extending a solid start to 2007 at a time when Japan and the United States seem to be searching for a second wind.
Despite news of inflation within the tolerance range of the European Central Bank, economists forecast an ECB interest rate rise next week that would push euro zone rates to 3.75 percent, versus 0.5 in Japan and 5.25 in the United States and Britain.
News of a modest manufacturing acceleration in the euro zone was expected but still striking, given that politicians and some company chief executives say exporting is made tougher by the euro's rising exchange rate against the yen and dollar.
"The key message is one of an economy that continues to see strong export growth. That includes intra-eurozone trade but we are also seeing strong exports growth towards Asian and OPEC countries as well," said Jacques Cailloux, an RBS economist.
His bank sponsors the surveys of purchasing managers, which showed the improvement stretched beyond the 13 countries that share the euro, with rises too in readings for manufacturing in Britain, Scandinavia and Switzerland.
In contrast, the pace of expansion in Japanese manufacturing dipped to its slowest in two years in February as weak domestic demand offset gains on the export side, suggesting the country has yet to secure a recovery that is also internally driven.
For the euro zone, the RBS/NTC Eurozone Purchasing Managers' Index of manufacturing activity came in at 55.6 in February, slightly above the 55.5 reading in January and well above 50, the dividing line between expansion and contraction.
The equivalent for Japan fell to a seasonally adjusted 53.0 in February from 53.4 in January, providing the worst reading in 23 months and continuing a downward trend since start-2006. The readings from Japan and Europe were to be followed by one in the United States later on Thursday, just a day after the estimate of growth for U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in the last quarter of 2006 was slashed to 2.2 from 3.5 percent annualised.
Economists polled by Reuters expect the index to get back to the break-even line of 50 from contraction territory in January.
EUROPE PULLING AHEAD?
After news from Europe this week of declining unemployment, the region's fortunes looked healthy, and perhaps better at this point than those of the other two long-industrialised parts of the globe, Japan and the United States.
Japan's economy produced the biggest surge in GDP in the last quarter of 2006, ahead of Europe, Britain and the United States in that order, according to the latest data available from the respective governments.
Monthly reports on various aspects of economic performance look stronger of late in Europe, however.
Unemployment in the euro zone dipped in January and economic confidence rose unexpectedly the following month, the European statistics office said on Wednesday
And further data on Thursday showed inflation of 1.8 percent in February, inside the ECB's tolerance range.
Despite what it now classed as its longest-lasting economic expansion since World War Two, Japan's staccato pace of growth remains a source of concern that figures beyond the latest PMI reading have also done little to dispel.
Japanese industrial output logged its biggest month-on-month decline in three years in January, dipping 1.5 percent from the previous month, official data showed this week, prompting some economists to say output may even shrink in the first quarter.
Japan got no respite either from the stock market slides of recent days, which began with a plunge in Shanghai at the start of the week and fanned from China across the world as investors abruptly lost their appetite for higher-risk strategies.
European shares steadied on Thursday after gains overnight on Wall Street, but that was not enough to ease fears in Japan and wider Asia about the impact of a U.S. slowdown on exporters.
The Nikkei average dropped 0.86 percent or 150.61 points to 17,453.51, the lowest close since Feb. 8.
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved
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