Real household disposable income per head, which is a measure of the standard of living, rose 1.5% in the second quarter compared with the first, and was up 3.3% compared with the same quarter a year ago.
Advertisement
The UK’s current account deficit reduced to £16.8 billion in the second quarter, down from £24 billion in the previous three months, according to the ONS.
“While the markets have so far taken a relatively relaxed view of the United Kingdom’s elevated current account deficits, it could become an increasing problem if the markets lose confidence in the UK economy for any reason”.
Economists say these revisions from previous years will give a boost to Chancellor George Osborne ahead of his spending review and autumn statement in November.
A Treasury spokesman said: “These new figures from the ONS show that the United Kingdom was the fastest growing G7 economy in both 2013 and 2014”.
David Tulk, chief Canadian strategist at TD Securities, said growth in July was concentrated in the energy sector, largely due to production ramping up after shutdowns earlier in the year for maintenance issues and wildfires in Alberta.
Economists had been expecting growth to come in at around 0.2%.
‘But we still face risks from the global economy so we should continue working through our long-term plan to build a resilient economy’.
The agency revised June’s GDP increase lower to 0.4 percent from 0.5 percent, still enough for Canada to record its strongest two-month expansion in a year.
CIBC, for example, pegs annualized growth for the quarter at 2.7 percent, above the Bank of Canada’s 1.5 percent.
“With manufacturing output slowing this is not the perfectly balanced recovery hoped for by policymakers”.
With these numbers in, many economists are now predicting that Canada will almost double the 1.5-per-cent growth rate that the Bank of Canada had predicted for the third quarter.
But with United Kingdom inflation stuck at zero and with worries about a Chinese slowdown and the impact of that on the global economy, the BoE is in no hurry.
Advertisement
“We expect that the recovery will pick up pace again soon”, said Paul Hollingsworth, United Kingdom economist at Capital Economics.
