Here's some figures on Britain's economic growth, in comparison to other mature economies countries with similar population size (the figures come from Eurostat):
Year UK USA France Unified Spain Italy Japan
Germany
1997 3.0% 4.5% 2.2% 1.8% 3.9% 1.9% 1.6%
1998 3.3% 4.2% 3.5% 2.0% 4.5% 1.4% -2.0%
1999 3.0% 4.4% 3.2% 2.0% 4.7% 1.9% -0.1%
2000 3.8% 3.7% 4.0% 3.2% 5.0% 3.6% 2.9%
2001 2.4% 0.8% 1.9% 1.2% 3.6% 1.8% 0.2%
2002 2.1% 1.6% 1.0% 0.0% 2.7% 0.3% 0.3%
2003 2.7% 2.5% 1.1% -0.2% 3.0% 0.0% 1.4%
2004 3.3% 3.9% 2.3% 1.2% 3.2% 1.2% 2.7%
2005 1.9% 3.2% 1.2% 0.9% 3.5% 0.1% 1.9%
2006 2.8% 3.3% 2.2% 2.7% 3.9% 1.9% 2.2%
Only Spain manages to consistently outperform us (we
managed to grow faster than them in only one year, 2003). It's worth noting however that Spain has been a net receiver of EU funds these last ten years, as has Italy. EU fund transfers to the western european states stops in 2007, when the money redirects east, so we will have to see how well Spain performs without this. Our record against the USA improves; from 2000 onwards, we outperform them in four out of the seven years, and are likely to outperform them in 2007. Against France too, we are clearly ahead of them from 2001 onwards (though they do well prior to this). Against Germany, Japan and Italy, we show a clean pair of heels.
Above all our growth is steady - we don't experience the wild swings that can be so distressing to households and business.
4 comments:
I used these to plot a graph, and it seems that the UK and Spain were less affected by the 2001 problems and both recovered faster, compared to the USA and the other nations.
Great post!
Thanks this really helps as i am a politic student doing the economy and man do i not understand!
Interesting, but it doesn't take into account the fact that there is a lag between economic policy and its impact on the economy, and so the growth experienced at the beginning of Labour's period of power was due mainly to the earlier economic policies of the previous administration.
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