Economists following Bank of England’s lead raise UK growth forecasts
City economists are raising their predictions for the UK economy’s growth in line with the Bank of England’s more positive outlook.
In a survey conducted by Consensus Economics, the average forecast for 2017 growth rose to 1.4 per cent, The Sunday Times reported today.
The positive outlook is up from a low of 0.6 per cent in August. In September,forecasters did not expect GDP to rise above 0.8 per cent in any quarter of 2017.
This reflects the mood of the Bank of England, which dramatically adjusted its predictions on Thursday to anticipate 2 per cent growth for the year.
The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) had slashed expectations to 0.8 per cent after the EU referendum last June, but this was bumped up to 1.4 per cent in November.
The changing expectations of the Bank and City economists come after strong consumer spending defied predictions of a post Brexit vote slowdown.
UBS and Credit Suisse also altered their 2017 growth forecasts in line with the positive outlook, to 1.4 per cent and 1.3 per cent respectively.