By Mark Smulian | 6 August 2014
Gross domestic product grew by 0.6% in the three months to the end of June, latest figures from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research have estimated.
This was slightly down on the 0.8% recorded by it in the quarter that ended in June.
According to the economic think-tank, this implies an annual rate of growth of around 3.0%. This is a higher estimate that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast that the economy would grow by 2.7% in 2014.
NIESR said that this level of growth led it to predict that Bank of England’s monetary policy committee would increase interest rates in February 2015
That rate has been left at 0.5% since 2009, soon after the recession began.
Meanwhile the Office of National Statistics has said that UK production output increased by 0.3% and manufacturing output by 0.2% between the first and second quarters of this year.
The largest contribution to production growth came from the electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning sectors, where output, rose by 4.4%.
Production and manufacturing are though still respectively 11.4% and 7.4% below the pre-downturn peaks they recorded in the first quarter of 2008.
