UK GDP 2021

The British Statistics Office reported on Friday that Britain’s economic growth reached 7.5% last year, better than expected and the best since 1941.

The record growth occurred despite the decline in GDP in December as a result of the spread of the omicron coronavirus variable. But the decline in gross domestic product in December was 0.2 percent. It was smaller than feared. The retail trade, catering sector and hotels were hardest hit by the restrictions imposed at the time. And in the last quarter of 2021, economic growth was 1%, which Darren Morgan, director of the Bureau of Economic Statistics, called “very good.”

UK economic growth last year was the highest among the G7 countries, but Morgan called for caution when making comparisons. “Growth in 2021 comes back to a low base in 2020 when the economy fell sharply. If we look at where the UK economy now compares to its pre-pandemic level, which a lot of people are doing for the bigger picture, the UK. in Mid-field in the G7″. He noted that the economies of the United States, Canada and France outperform the British economy, and less than the economies of Italy, Germany and Japan.

In 2020, as a result of the pandemic, the British economy contracted by 9.4%, the worst result in 99 years.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported that despite the decline in December, the monthly GDP was at the level of February 2020, the last full month before the Covid restrictions were implemented. However, GDP in the fourth quarter of 2021 remained at 0.4%. Below the values ​​of the last three months of 2019.

This year, the British economy will continue to grow, but growth will be lower than recently expected. Last week, the Bank of England lowered its growth forecast from 5% by raising interest rates. up to 3.75 percent He also warned that due to inflation, households would experience the largest drop in living standards since comparative statistics began three decades ago.

From London, Bartomig Nedzinski