Surprise pick-up in UK industrial output, but it’s unlikely to last
London — British industrial output unexpectedly picked up in June after oil producers delayed normal seasonal maintenance, but falling car production and a slide in construction bode poorly for future months. Britain’s economy eked out only sluggish growth in the first half of 2017 as consumers battled with higher inflation triggered by last year’s vote to leave the European Union. The Bank of England is expecting stronger net exports and business investment to lift growth in the second half of this year, but Thursday’s official data offered mixed signals. Britain’s trade deficit in goods with the rest of the world widened unexpectedly in June, as export volumes suffered their sharpest monthly fall in a year, though looking at the quarter as a whole, export volumes are up by 5% on the year. Industrial output contracted by 0.4% in the three months to June, unchanged from an initial estimate by the Office for National Statistics that contributed to weak overall gross domestic product ...
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