BNR’s internal economist, Han de Jong, speaks of an “unexpected failure”. “There’s a lot of noise on the line, but it’s better that way than the other way around.”
Dutch GDP data is released quarterly, UK monthly. And the numbers are also different from year to year. ‘British GDP was 0.2% higher than a year earlier in November, which is a very low figure. And that figure has continued to decline throughout 2022,” says De Jong.
Brexit
This means that the UK figures show a fragile balance rather than slight growth. What we see here is that Brexit is a problem. The trend is negative. And the UK is also dealing with declining world trade growth and high energy prices. The latter is mostly seen in industry, where the figures paint a rather negative picture.’
Production in manufacturing was nearly 6% lower in November than it was a year ago. In the Netherlands and Germany, this figure was much more positive, with a decrease of 0.2% and an increase of 0.4% respectively. “If you then look into the details of these figures, you will see that chemicals and pharmaceuticals are doing very badly in the UK,” says De Jong.
Export
UK export data paints a slightly positive picture, although there is also a lot of fluctuation. And SME entrepreneurs indicate that they have big problems with the consequences of Brexit. ‘The big companies still survive, but it has become almost impossible for small companies to export anything. They really have a big problem,’ says De Jong.
In this respect, the United Kingdom is facing a difficult period. The predicted recession seems inevitable for De Jong. ‘It’s really going to be two degrees tougher than us, the numbers on the UK economy are likely to be much worse over the next few months. And this will also concern us because the United Kingdom is a relatively important sales market’.
German economy
At the same time, data on the German economy was also released. The euro zone’s largest economy grew by 1.9% last year, appearing more resilient than expected. However, there is pessimism about next year, the problems with Russia and the war in Ukraine seem to make the year difficult.