According to updates to official data revealed on Friday, Britain’s economic growth since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has proven significantly stronger than previously believed, with more rapid expansion than Germany or France.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics reported that the British economy grew by 1.8% between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2023, which was the final full quarterly before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
This constituted an important upward revision from the most recent ONS estimate, released on August 11, which showed the economy remaining 0.2% lower than it was before to the pandemic and had ranked it last among the major advanced economies.
After the ONS released preliminary revisions on September 1, which suggested the GDP was already 0.6% bigger than it was before the outbreak, a larger estimate of the size of the British economy had been widely anticipated.
Political discussion has focused on Britain’s relative economic growth since the outbreak and its decision to leave the European Union, particularly with a national election expected next year.
As he got ready to leave for his Conservatives Party’s annual conference, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, posted on social media that “people underestimated the viability of the UK economic – today’s data proved them wrong.”
While the United Kingdom’s growth in its GDP for the time was 1.8%, it lagged well behind the 6.1% increase recorded in the US during the same period and was also weaker than Japan, Italy, or Canada. It also outpaced the growth of 1.7% in France as well as 0.2% in Germany.
By historical standards, recent growth has been underwhelming, and the rising cost of living, which exacerbated after the Russian conquest of the Ukraine in February 2022, has had a devastating impact on many households.
“The numbers… do not change the overall impression that the economy, with the exception of Germany and France, has lagged below all other G7 nations since the outbreak. According to Ruth Gregory, the deputy chief UK analyst at Capital Economics, “And that’s because the full drag from greater interest rates has been felt.”
In order to rein in surging inflation, the Bank of England hiked rates of interest 14 times between December 2021 and last week, when they were at an all-time high of 5.25%.
Thomas Pugh, a financial analyst at accounting firm RSM UK, stated that “if the economy of the United Kingdom has been operating warmer than we believed, it could assist in clarifying some of the tenacity in prices and the tightening of the labor market.”