UK Raises Growth Forecasts by 0.1% in 2015 and 2016

March 18, 2015 Share Print 0

Britain raised its official growth forecasts slightly on Wednesday as finance minister George Osborne announced an annual budget statement.

Growth for 2015 was forecast to be 2.5 percent, up from a forecast of 2.4 percent made in December, Osborne told parliament.

Growth in 2016 is now expected to reach 2.3 percent compared with 2.2 percent in the December forecasts made by Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility.

Osborne said the OBR believed growth would hold at 2.3 percent in 2017 and 2018 before rising to 2.4 percent in 2019.

The Bank of England has predicted Britain’s economy will grow 2.9 percent this year and in 2016, helped by the plunge in oil prices that is expected to boost consumption.

The OBR also forecast the unemployment rate would fall to 5.3 percent this year, down from 5.7 percent in the three months to January, Osborne said.

via Reuters

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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.