Greek economy expands 0.7 percent in third-quarter

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's economy grew 0.7 percent in the third quarter compared to the previous three-month period, with the rate unchanged from a flash estimate earlier in the month, the country's statistics service ELSTAT said on Friday. The provisional estimate on gross domestic product, based on seasonally adjusted data, showed that a 0.6 percent rise in consumer spending and a 1.6 percent increase in investment quarter-on-quarter helped Greece's 182 billion euro economy expand in the July-to-September period. Exports of services, mainly tourism, grew 4.7 percent. ELSTAT released seasonally-adjusted quarter-on-quarter GDP data for the first time since 2011 earlier this month, showing that the battered economy emerged from a protracted, austerity-led recession in the first quarter of this year and continued to grow ever since. The statistics service also released seasonally unadjusted GDP data on an annual basis that showed the economy expanded by 1.9 percent in the third quarter, at a faster pace than a previous 1.7 percent estimate. Athens and its EU/IMF international lenders project the economy will expand 0.6 percent this year. Greece's economic boom of the early 2000s ended with the country sinking into a recession after a global credit crunch. A subsequent debt crisis and austerity imposed by EU/IMF lenders who bailed out the country deepened the recession, wiping out a quarter of the economy over six years. (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos, Editing by Angeliki Koutantou)