Trails of planes streak across the sky above Regent Street on February 15, 2024 in London, England.
Dan Kitwood | Getty Images
LONDON – The UK’s gross domestic product rose 0.1% in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday, providing another sign of a return to sluggish economic growth this year.
The monthly figure was in line with a projection in a Reuters poll. On an annual basis, GDP was 0.2% lower.
The economy contracted in the third and fourth curves of 2023, putting the UK into a technical recession.
January saw light growth, revised upward to 0.3% on Friday.
Construction production, which had supported growth earlier in the year, fell 1.9% in February. Instead, manufacturing was the biggest contributor to GDP, rising 1.1% in February, while growth in the services sector, dominant in the UK, slowed to 0.1% from 0.3%.
The data “all but confirms that the recession ended” last year, Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.
“But while we expect a better economic recovery than most, we doubt it will be strong enough to prevent inflation (and interest rates) from falling further as appears to be happening in the United States,” Dales added.
British inflation fell more than expected in March to 3.4%, the lowest in almost two and a half years.
In the United States, however, price increases were higher than forecast at 3.5%, postponing expectations for the start of interest rate cuts in September.
This is breaking news and will be updated shortly.