LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s economy, which has struggled to maintain its recovery from its coronavirus lockdown crash, grew by a slower than expected 1.1% in September from August, even before the latest restrictions on businesses, official data showed.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected a monthly growth rate of 1.5% in September.
In the July-September period, gross domestic product grew by a record 15.5% compared with the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics said.
The Reuters poll had pointed to GDP growth of 15.8% in the third quarter as the economy tried to recover from its nearly 20% crash in the second quarter.
Last week, the Bank of England said the world’s sixth-biggest economy was likely to shrink by a record 11% in 2020 before growing by just over 7% in 2021.
However, since then news of a potentially effective COVID-19 vaccine has raised hopes that next year’s bounce-back could be stronger than the BoE’s forecast.
(Reporting by Andy Bruce and William Schomberg; Editing by Alistair Smout)
