Italy's gross domestic product grew by 0.5 percent in the second quarter of 2010 over the first quarter and by 1.3 percent year on year, national statistics bureau ISTAT said Friday.
The figures are better than recent preliminary estimates: up 0.4 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively.
The quarter-to-quarter data is the best since the second quarter of 2006 while the year-on-year figure is the best since the third quarter of 2007, according to the ISTAT report.
On Thursday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Italy's GDP in the third quarter would decline by 0.3 percent over the same three-month period last year.
The OECD said this would make Italy the only member of the Group of Seven (G7) most industrialised countries to see its economy shrink in the July-September period.
The ISTAT report also showed that Italy's industrial output growth slowed in July, rising by 0.1 percent over the previous month and 4.8 percent over July of last year.
In June, industrial output rose 0.5 percent for the month and 8.1 percent over the same month in 2009, the biggest year-on-year increase since December 2000.
Output for the first seven months of this year was 5.4 percent higher than for the same period in 2009.