The UK Economy

The underlying pattern of growth over the course of last summer has proven difficult to interpret from the national accounts data. What at first appears to be a recovery, from the low rate of growth seen at the beginning of last year, gaining momentum over the summer, is instead likely to be an initial bounce back in the second quarter followed by further weakness in growth. The Office for National Statistics estimates that without the disruption associated with the Jubilee holiday, quarterly GDP growth would have decelerated from 0.8–1.3 per cent in the second quarter to 0.2–0.5 per cent in the third quarter last year. This is in contrast with the acceleration in growth from 0.6 to 0.9 per cent per quarter over the same period suggested by the national accounts, portraying a rather different picture of the economic recovery. Preliminary estimates of GDP suggest that the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year. This is as we anticipated when preparing the forecast, which was completed before the fourth quarter estimates of GDP were released. Taken together, the figures for the fourth quarter and the estimates of growth in the absence of the disruption associated with the Jubilee holiday suggests that the recovery has been slow to gather pace in the second half of the year. In the year as a whole, GDP grew by an estimated 1.7 per cent.