2nd May 2018

Eurozone growth in decline

The growth rates in both the Eurozone and the UK individually have been slowing this year.

Economic growth in the Eurozone slowed to 0.4% for the period from January to March 2018.
This has seen a 0.3% decline since last quarter. Growth was up at 0.7% in the previous quarter from October to December 2017.
On a year-on-year basis, the eurozone’s GDP growth slowed from a rate of 2.8 per cent to 2.5 per cent.
The growth rate of loans to firms had slumped by 0.3% from January to February this year. This indicates that GDP growth has slowed from 2.7% in the last three months of 2017. This has slowed to a rate of about 2% so far this year.
The Eurozone is still doing better than the UK economy, which only grew by 0.1% in the same quarter.
“This was the fifth out of seven consecutive quarters that the eurozone grew faster than the UK following the EU referendum.” – Barret Kupelian, senior economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The latest Office of National Statistics data shows the UK’s economy growing at an annual rate of just 1.2 per cent. This is the weakest it has been in 6 years, since 2012.
Analysts have attributed the UK lack of growth to Brexit uncertainty and the cost cuttings on household incomes after the peak in inflation last year.

Photo credit: express.co.uk

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