The United Kingdom faces an 11% contraction in GDP in 2020, significantly larger than initially estimated, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Monday.
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The revision amounts to 1.7 percentage points. This is higher than previously published by the ONS, which was 9.3%.
The ONS is justifying this new calculation by collecting more data.
“2020 is an unprecedented year. As movement restrictions were introduced to prevent the spread of Covid-19, we have seen a very large drop in economic activity,” said Craig McLaren, National Accounts Manager at the ONS.
“When we released our initial estimates at the time, we warned that they were more uncertain than usual. Today we released our updated estimates for 2020, which show that the overall economy is worse than we first estimated, although the industrial manufacturing sector actually performed better, ” he added.
The updated data particularly showed that the health service had to face higher costs than originally estimated, which reduced its contribution to the economy.
In the retail sector, sales were also weaker than initially estimated.
The ONS will publish updated growth figures for 2021 and 2022 on 30 September.
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