LONDON – The UK economy saw its biggest contraction in more than three centuries in 2020, according to official estimates, highlighting the economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic in a country that has also suffered one of the most lethal outbreaks in the world.
Although the UK is struggling with a highly contagious new variant of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is hopeful that a rapid vaccination campaign will allow a gradual reopening of the economy in the coming months, paving the way for a consumer-driven recovery later in the year. year.
Gross domestic product shrank 9.9% over the year as a whole, reported the Bureau of National Statistics on Friday, the biggest annual drop among advanced economies in the Group of Seven. France’s economy shrank 8.3% and Italy’s contracted 8.8%, according to provisional estimates. German GDP fell by 5%. The US shrank 3.5%.
However, the data showed that the UK economy grew at an annualized rate of 4% in the last quarter of the year, aided by government spending and a small increase in business investment.
The decline in the UK’s GDP in 2020 was the biggest in more than 300 years, according to data from the Bank of England, although the preliminary estimate should be revised. BOE data show that the economy last saw a comparable drop in 1921, when it shrank 9.7% during the depression that followed World War I. The economy last registered a major contraction in 1709, when it fell 13% during an exceptionally cold winter known as the Great Frost.