Photograph by Valerie Everett
The UK has avoided falling back into recession, with the latest ONS estimates showing a 0.3% growth in GDP in the first quarter of 2013.
The figures show that the economy has been broadly flat-lining over the last 18 months, continually wavering between small increments of decline and growth.
The services sector provided the greatest contribution to the Q1 GDP growth, expanding by 0.6%, with production industries also growing 0.2% in large part due to the completion of maintenance work to North Sea oil production. In contrast, the construction industry contracted by 2.5%.
The UK’s GDP remains 2.6% below its peak in Q1 2008 before the international financial crisis. Many had feared a further decline in GDP, which would have pushed the UK into a triple-dip recession, but the small signs of growth shown in the figures were described by Chancellor George Osborne as “encouraging”.
Today's figures are an encouraging sign the economy is healing. Despite a tough economic backdrop, we are making progress.
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) April 25, 2013
The slow rate of growth has led to two rating agencies downgrading the UK’s credit rating from AAA to AA, and George Osborne has been facing calls from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rethink the pace and depth of the austerity measures put into place by the government to try to kickstart the economy.
The UK economy’s rate of recovery from the 2008 crisis has been the slowest from any recession in the last century, including after the “Great Depression”.
