Recession-ending GDP figures upwardly revised to 0.3 per cent
Recession-ending GDP figures upwardly revised to 0.3 per cent
Friday 26th February 2010
The recession ended in Britain by a greater margin than first thought, with official figures being revised to 0.3 per cent growth in the final quarter of last year.GDP figures from the Office for National Statistics had initially claimed the country emerged from recession with 0.1 per cent growth in the last three months of 2009, but those figures were upwardly revised by 0.2 percentage points today.
Most economists had predicted growth of 0.3 per cent when the 0.1 per cent figure was announced last month.
The revision means that GDP shrank by 3.3 per cent last year, with the UK economy contracting by a total of 6.2 per cent between the second quarter of 2008 and the third of 2009 - the longest recession the country had experienced since records began in 1955.
Today's news is welcome for the government, which had hoped to put economic recovery at the heart of its forthcoming general election campaign.
Chancellor Alistair Darling told BBC News: "These figures are welcome but there's a lot of uncertainty we have to negotiate over the coming months.
"We are coming through recession. We are moving forward to recovery. But it is absolutely essential for us to retain support for the economy. To remove it now as the Tories are suggesting would be absolute madness."
The UK had been the last major economy to come out of recession prior to January's figures.
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