Bank of England boss predicts UK will exit economic slump ‘relatively rapidly’
THE Bank of England boss believes the UK can recover “relatively rapidly” from this historic recession.
And other experts are labelling this trajectory a V-shaped bounce back.
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Bank governor Andrew Bailey predicts the economy will exit the unprecedented slump “much more rapidly than the pull back from the global financial crisis” of 2009.
This is as long as social-distancing measures are largely over by September.
The Bank’s new Covid-19 analysis, published yesterday, shows the economy shrinking by three per cent in the first quarter of this year.
This will be followed by a massive 25 per cent decline in the three months to June.
Such back-to-back falls would make it the UK’s first recession in more than a decade.
For the year, the economy is expected to contract by 14 per cent — the sharpest contraction since 1706.
That is equivalent to a £9,000 hit for every family, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.
UK growth may start to recover later this year and rebound by 15 per cent in 2021.
It could get back to its pre-virus peak in the middle of next year.
Holding interest rates at 0.1 per cent, Mr Bailey added that “there is only limited scarring to the economy” as he believes Government support schemes will be successful.
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But he expects unemployment to peak at nine per cent this year, a 25-year high, up from four per cent, or 1.34
million people, pre-crisis.
Laura Suter, analyst at investment platform AJ Bell, said: “The Bank is fairly confident of its projections of a V-shaped recovery but it depends on how social distancing is relaxed.”
James Smith, of the Resolution Foundation, said: “The Bank points to a fairly rapid recovery but Britain is likely to have a legacy of high unemployment for some years.”
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