The UK Economy

Extract

Ahead of the official data, we anticipate only slow growth in the first quarter of this year. GDP stagnated in the fourth quarter of 2001, with continued growth in the service sector being offset by a sharp contraction of 2.2 per cent in industrial production. It appears increasingly likely that this was just a temporary pause. Whilst growth is expected to be faster later in the year, as shown in chart 1, the relatively poor performance at the turn of the year and lower projections for government spending growth this year mean that we now expect only a 1.8 per cent rise in GDP in the year as a whole, below the bottom end of the range projected by the Treasury in the recent Budget forecast. The risk of the green shoots of recovery failing to consolidate remains as a downside risk to our central forecast.