Britain emerges from longest recession on strong footing

Britain emerged from the longest recession on record in the fourth quarter of 2009 on a stronger-than-expected footing, revised official data showed yesterday.

British gross domestic product - the value of all the goods and services produced in the economy - grew by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.

That was stronger than the previous anaemic estimate of 0.1-per cent expansion, which had appeared to indicate that the economy only just scraped out recession by the skin of its teeth.

The upgraded reading also beat market expectations for a revised return to growth of 0.2 per cent in the final three months of 2009, after six successive quarters of contraction.

"This has been revised owing to upward revisions to services and production," the ONS said in the release.

The data also showed that battered British economy has shrunk by 6.2 per cent since the recession began in the second quarter of 2008, following revisions to previous quarters.

"The good news is obviously that the quarterly gain in GDP was revised up more sharply than expected," said analyst Jonathan Loynes at the Capital Economics consultancy.

"But that is still weaker than the original expectations for the figure of 0.4 per cent," he added.

On an annual basis, British GDP shrank by 3.3 per cent in the fourth quarter, compared with the equivalent October-December period in 2008, the ONS added.

That was slightly worse than the previous estimate of a 3.2-per cent contraction, while analysts had expected the economy to shrink by a revised 3.1 per cent on this reading.