UK ECONOMY SINKS 2% IN FIRST QUARTER

The United Kingdom (UK) has a case of a bad cold, with the economy sinking 2% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the previous quarter, with output in March dipping by 5.8% as the government started putting in restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an Associated Press report on May 13, 2020, Pan Pylas said the mournful performance was the biggest quarterly decline since the financial crisis of 2008 but more bad news was coming as the Bank of England warned that the country risked suffering the biggest annual slum since 1706.

“With the arrival of the pandemic, nearly every aspect of the economy was hit in March, dragging growth to a record monthly fall,” said statistician Jonathan Athow, but Pylas said during the same month, the only sectors that did grow reflected the needs of a country dealing with a pandemic - IT support, soaps and cleaning products, and the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.

“Last week, the Bank of England warned that the British economy could fall by around 30% in the first half of the year, before a strong recovery in the second half of the year, leaving it 14% smaller by the end of 2020. Still, even with that predicted second-half recovery, the annual fall would be the biggest in over 300 years,” Pylas stressed. #coronavirusimpact #COVID19