Recession is over but recovery is some way off
28 Jan 10
The UK’s recession is “over”, technically at least
But the British economy is still desperately weak, with growth of just 0.1 per cent. That’s not great, especially given the £200bn pumped into the economy through quantitative easing and the fat that interest rates have hovered above zero for months now.
As Ian McCafferty, the CBI’s chief economic adviser, puts it:
“While the data marks the end of the longest recession in living memory, the slightly disappointing rise of only 0.1 per cent demonstrates how fragile the recovery is… even if the estimate is revised upwards in coming months, this rate of growth is lacklustre, and for many it will not feel like recovery for some time yet.”
It will clearly be a long, hard slog before we can achieve growth figures that can underpin a return to prosperity, and provide the Government with the tax revenue to pay back the vast sums that it borrowed to prevent a recession becoming a slump.