UK recession continues
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from February 1993.
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Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter from the third, mainly as a result of high North Sea oil and gas output, but for 1992 as a whole it fell 0.5 per cent.
"The figures showed that we were still bumping along the bottom at the end of last year. If you strip out oil, output still ticked down," said Kevin Gardiner, U.K. economist at brokers S.G. Warburg.
The rise means the British economy has now expanded, albeit only slightly, for two consecutive quarters.
From peak-to-trough of the current recession output fell four per cent and while this is the longest slump since the 1930s it has not been the deepest.
The peak-to-trough fall during the 1980/81 recession was 5.5 per cent between the second quarter of 1979 and the first quarter of 1981, the Central Statistical Office said.
Although revisions to 1991 data meant the yearly fall in the main GDP measure was half Chancellor Norman Lamont's forecast one per cent drop, GDP excluding oil and gas, the so-called onshore economy, fell 0.7 per cent, much as expected.
"The figures will look good in the history books because the recession was less than previous figures showed," Warburg's Gardiner said. "But it doesn't alter the fact that we are still waiting for the first substantially positive quarter for the onshore economy."
Oil and gas production surged 6.3 per cent in the fourth quarter.
