Britain’s GDP growth slowed to a quarterly 0.4 per cent from a previous estimate of 0.5 per cent
Britain’s economy has announced its weakest annual growth rate since 2012.
Britain’s GDP growth slowed to 0.4 per cent in the three months to December from a previous estimate of 0.5 per cent, Office for National Statistics said today after unexpectedly revising down its estimated output of the production industries.
The ONS has stated: ‘Growth in the latest quarter was driven by business services and finance within the services sector, there was, though, a small downward revision to services since the preliminary estimate of GDP, but this does not impact on services quarterly growth to one decimal place. The downgrade of the full-year and fourth-quarter growth rates also raised questions about the strength of the economy as the Bank of England prepares to raise interest rates.’
On a year-on-year basis, the UK economy grew by 1.4 per cent in the last quarter of 2017. In contrast, the eurozone grew by 2.7 per cent, Germany by 2.9 per cent, France by 2.4 per cent and Italy also grew by a modest 1.6 per cent.
“A number of very small revisions to mining, energy generation and services were enough to see a slight downward revision to quarterly growth overall, despite headline services output being unchanged,” Darren Morgan of the ONS told media.
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