LONDON - European stock markets were steady at the close Wednesday after an upbeat growth forecast for Britain and solid German data, as Wall Street cheered surprisingly strong US jobs data.

Britain's economy will grow far stronger than expected this year, finance minister Philip Hammond said as the country readies to trigger its exit from the European Union. With UK activity performing better than feared following its June referendum in favour of Brexit, Hammond predicted the economy would grow by 2.0 percent this year -- much higher than the government's previous 1.4-percent GDP forecast.

He also said that Britain would borrow far less this year than predicted last year. The pound spiked in response, and the London stock market firmed as the economic outlook looked rosier, but then both slipped back as investors dismissed the budget as a "non-event".

"In a time of Brexit uncertainty, a nice boring budget from Spreadsheet Phil was probably the order of the day," said London Capital Group analyst Jasper Lawler, referring to Hammond by his nickname. Overall the announcement was a "damp squib", Lawler said.

"Having set out his stall in November and still awaiting the main event -- our Brexit negotiations -- the chancellor's fiscal tweaks today were never going to raise too many eyebrows," said Neil Williams, Chief Economist at Hermes Investment Management. In eurozone deals meanwhile, Frankfurt stocks were underpinned by data painting a rosier picture of the currency bloc's biggest economy.

Industrial production in Germany grew 2.8 percent in January, preliminary data showed Wednesday, comforting fears that global economic uncertainty could put the brakes on activity.

"After yesterday's shocking new orders data, today's industrial production data brings some relief for the German economy," said ING Diba bank analyst Carsten Brzeski.

The European Central Bank meanwhile meets Thursday with no rate change expected as the bank also likely to resist calls to end a flood of cheap money.

Critics were urging the Frankfurt institution to wind down its massive monetary easing measures that include buying tens of billions of euros of government and corporate bonds each month, cheap loans to banks, and historically low interest rates, but ECB chief Mario Draghi is expected to shrug them off. More action is on the cards at the Federal Reserve's rate meeting in Washington next week whose decision is largely seen depending on the latest updates on American jobs.

US private-sector hiring surged in February, posting the biggest increase in nearly six years and far outstripping expectations, payroll services firm ADP reported Wednesday.

The figures "bolstered expectations that the FOMC will raise rates by another 25 basis points next week", said John Higgins at Capital Economics, referring to the Federal Reserve rate-setting committee. With odds in the market approaching 100 percent for a rate hike in March, investors are already looking to the next one, he said.

"Investors are coming round to the view that the Committee may hike by the same amount again in June," he said. Wall Street got an early boost from the ADP figures amid expectations that the jobs figures will help steer the Federal Reserve towards a rate hike at next week's rate meeting.

But the Dow index then levelled off approaching midday in New York as investors chose to sit back and wait for the Fed. Asian markets diverged Wednesday with patchy gains as drugs firms were hit by US President Donald Trump's promise to slash prices. But news that Chinese imports had surged 38.1 percent in February -- almost twice as much as forecast -- provided a platform for recovery in Asian markets.