PARIS - The gross domestic product (GDP) in the OECD area saw a 0.4-percent increase in the first quarter of 2013, on the back of a flat growth rate registered in the fourth quarter of 2012, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said Tuesday.

"The OECD total masks a wide spectrum of growth rates across countries however," the OECD said in its new report, as the latest data showed diverging patterns across the countries in the bloc in the January-March period.

Japan and the United States saw their real GDP growth increase by 0.9 percent and 0.6 percent respectively, while in Britain and Germany, GDP grew by 0.3 percent and 0.1 percent.

France's GDP, however, contracted for a second consecutive quarter by 0.2 percent, putting Europe's second economic powerhouse into recession.

In Italy, national economic output declined for the seventh consecutive quarter. But the pace of contraction slowed down to 0.5 percent, compared to 0.9 percent in the previous quarter.

The pace of contraction also slowed across the 27-member European Union to minus 0.1 percent, down from 0.5 percent in the previous three months, and in the eurozone to 0.2 percent, compared with 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, the OECD said.