Very fragile recovery
Officially, for the time being, the UK has emerged from its longest recession since the war. According to preliminary figures from the Office of National Statistics, we managed to scrape together 0.1 percent GDP growth in the last quarter of 2009.
That's the good news. The bad news is that we're pretty much the last major economy to emerge from recession, the growth was weaker than expected, and the growth is so small that if these preliminary figures were to be revised downward by more than 0.1 percent, we would officially still be in recession.
The ONS said the increase is due entirely to growth in the distribution, hotels and catering sectors (of which motoring and retail made the biggest contribution) and, ominously, ‘government and other' (of which health was the biggest). If our emergence from recession depends on government spending, then the recovery, such as it is, looks even more fragile.
Even those sectors that grew can't necessarily be counted on to continue doing so. The car scrappage scheme that has fuelled the car industry has expired, the Christmas retail frenzy is over and the sooner or later we're going to have to see some pretty serious reductions in public sector spending.
Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?
Quarterly contributions to GDP growth
