Better than a kick in the proverbials
A month ago the Office for National Statistics announced preliminary UK GDP figures for Q4 2009 which revealed the UK economy had grown for the first time in a year and a half.
The bad news was that the GDP growth was an anaemic 0.1 percent, so the end of the recession could be reversed if the final figures were revised downwards.
Today, the ONS announced it was actually revising that figure upwards and we actually grew by a break-neck 0.3 percent in Q4. This was down to a strong December, with both services and manufacturing doing better than expected. The final, final, estimate will be published on 30 March.
There are some other good vibes for the UK economy too. The February GfK NOP consumer confidence index rose for the second month, indicating increasing optimism. As you can see from the table below, sentiment is considerably higher than a year ago.
