Britain’s economy grew by 0.6% in the three months to March, the strongest expansion since the fourth quarter of 2021 when it grew by 1.5%. This marks the end of the shallow recession that the UK entered in the second half of last year.
The Office for National Statistics said gross domestic product expanded by 0.6% in the three months to March. A Reuters poll of economists had pointed to a 0.4% expansion of gross domestic product in the January-to-March period, after GDP shrank by 0.3% in the final quarter of 2023.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed the news, saying the economy had “turned a corner”. However, the opposition Labour Party, which has a large lead in opinion polls, has accused Sunak and finance minister Jeremy Hunt of being out of touch to think voters are feeling better off.
The Bank of England, which held interest rates at a 16-year high on Thursday, forecast quarterly growth of 0.4% for the first quarter of this year and a smaller 0.2% rise for the second quarter.
Sterling strengthened against the U.S. dollar immediately after the figures were released. On a monthly basis, the economy grew by 0.4 % in March, faster than the 0.1% growth forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.
Despite the positive growth figures, Britain remains one of the slowest countries to recover from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. At the end of the first quarter of 2024, the country’s economy was just 1.7% bigger than its level in late 2019, before the pandemic, with only Germany among the G7 faring worse.
