Summary Greece has been mired in recession since the third quarter of 2008.
ATHENS (AFP) - The long-running Greek recession is easing, official data showed on Wednesday.
The economy shrank by 0.2 percent in the second quarter from output at the same time last year.
Although this marked the 24th quarter running of annualised declines, the figure, unadjusted for seasonal blips, showed a clear improvement from the first-quarter decline of 1.1 percent.
Greece is having a record tourist season that could allow the statistics authority Elstat to post positive growth figure before the year end.
"Greece s second quarter GDP (gross domestic product) release suggests that the economy is slowly emerging from the abyss," noted economist James Howat at Capital Economics.
"Encouragingly, surveys suggest that Greece s recovery continued into the third quarter," he added.
Elstat nonetheless also revised its first-quarter number, which was worse than an initial estimate of a 0.9 percent contraction.
Greece has been mired in recession since the third quarter of 2008, but the government expects business activity to grow by 0.6 percent for 2014 as a whole.
The European Commission also forecasts that Greece will finally pull out of its slump this year, and maybe post growth of 2.9 percent in 2015.
Berenberg Bank economist Christian Schulz said the latest figure "partly confirms the major rebound in confidence indicators since 2012."
After a debt crisis erupted in 2010, Athens was granted more than 240 billion euros in credit by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
That came in exchange for strict reforms however, which has curbed consumer spending and driven unemployment to one of the highest levels in Europe.
In May, unemployment eased slightly but still stood at 27.2 percent of the workforce.
Howat emphasised that the economy is still "too weak for the country to reduce its huge public debt without significantly more outside help."
