Britain’s gross domestic product rose 0.2 per cent in January as construction output jumped unexpectedly, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday.
The core figure matched the forecast of economists polled by Reuters. It followed a 0.1 per cent contraction in December as the UK economy slipped into a shallow recession in the second half of last year.
Construction output rose 1.1 per cent in January, but fell 0.9 per cent in the three months, the ONS said. Services rose 0.2 per cent in January, providing the largest contribution to growth, while manufacturing fell 0.2 per cent.
Jack Meaning, Barclays’ chief UK economist, described the data as “not an overly positive picture, but it is ahead of where we left off at the end of last year”. Meaning told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday:
Industrial and manufacturing have been weak for the last few prints, you’d expect some bounce-back from that in the end. This is good to see, but we’ll have to see it on a more prolonged basis to know that it is something sustained.
After the data release, the British pound was unchanged against the US dollar and the euro.
