British Chamber of Commerce Downgrades UK’s Growth Forecast

Just days after the U.K.’s trade secretary branded the country “too lazy and too fat,” Britain’s leading business body has downgraded its U.K. growth forecasts.

The British Chambers of Commerce added insult on Monday to injury caused by the pro-Brexit Trade Secretary Liam Fox’s remarks over the weekend Saturday by predicting gross domestic product growth of 1.8 percent in 2016, 1 percent in 2017 and 1.8 percent in 2018.

The BCC’s forecasts come in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union (EU) and were lowered from previous robust estimates of 2.2 percent growth this year, 2.3 percent in 2017 and 2.4 percent in 2018.

In its first economic forecast since the EU referendum in June, the BCC said that weaker consumer spending and a large fall in investment were the main reasons for the downgrade. The U.K. has yet to formally trigger the exit process with the EU, causing uncertainty over the real effect that a Brexit will have on business confidence and consumption.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza