Britain’s economy grew 0.1% in Q1‎

Data published by the Office of National Statistics in Britain today, Friday, showed that the country’s gross domestic product grew by 0.1 percent in the first three months of 2023, a period that was expected to form part of a long recession.

However, a sharp and unexpected contraction of 0.3% in March showed that the recovery remains fragile.

According to “Reuters”, economists polled by Reuters expected an average growth on a quarterly basis of 0.1 percent, but they expected the pace of growth to remain steady in the last month of the quarter.

“The reason for the decline in March is due to widespread declines in the services sector,” said Darren Morgan of the Office for National Statistics.

The Statistics Office stated that the strikes also weighed on economic activity in the first quarter

The data shows that Britain’s economy is still 0.5 percent lower than it was in the last quarter of 2019 prior to the outbreak of the Corona epidemic, recording the lowest recovery among the economies of developed countries.

On Thursday, the Bank of England expected Britain’s economy to grow by 0.25 percent in 2023 as a whole, a slight increase but an improvement after the bank’s previous estimates indicated a contraction of 0.5 percent.

Inflation in Britain exceeded 10 percent in March, which is twice the rate in the United States and higher than in the countries of the euro zone.