Fourth-quarter economic data disappoints market
While strictly speaking the UK economy has now moved out of recession, unless the figures released by the Office for National Statistics are amended down over the next few weeks, the improvement of 0.1% was far short of the 0.4% expansion expected by analysts. This indicates that the UK economic upturn is far weaker than even the most pessimistic of analysts had expected and a small revision by the Office for National Statistics could in reality scupper hopes that the UK economy did in fact grow in the final quarter.
On the upside, this is the first sign of growth in the UK economy after six quarters of contraction as the UK recession deepened. It would appear that the construction sector held back further growth in the economy with the service sector and industrial output numbers growing in the final quarter of 2009. It is inevitable that the financial press will highlight the fact that the UK has moved out of recession and the government will be quick to pinpoint this fact, but there are still concerns that the UK economy has yet to really shake off the recession.
When you consider the billions upon billions of pounds of taxpayer's money which have poured into the economy, surely we could have expected a sharper rebound?
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