UK economy surpassed pre-COVID size in late 2021, new data shows
The British economy was 0.6% larger in the fourth quarter of 2021 than in the final quarter of 2019, compared with an earlier estimate that it was 1.2% smaller, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Friday.
This big upward revision brings forward the date at which Britain's economy regained its pre-COVID size by more than a year and a half, and shows at the end of 2021 it had made a faster recovery than Germany, France or Italy, and was level with Japan, although it was behind the United States and Canada.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government has been criticised for a sluggish recovery by the opposition Labour Party ahead of a national election expected next year, and the latest revisions were welcomed by finance minister Jeremy Hunt.
«The fact that the UK recovered from the pandemic much faster than thought shows that once again those determined to talk down the British economy have been proved wrong,» he said.
The changes also have implications for the Bank of England, which has a subdued growth outlook and has found it harder to tame inflation than the U.S.
Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank.
In its last set of quarterly growth data, the ONS estimated that in the three months to the end of June 2023, Britain's economy was still 0.2% smaller than in the fourth quarter of 2019, the last full quarter before the start of the pandemic.
This left Britain at the bottom of the Group of Seven advanced economies in terms of its recovery from the pandemic.
Other countries had not finished revising GDP, so it was not yet possible to have a definitive ranking of their economic performance during and after COVID, the ONS said.
In Friday's announcement — part of an annual revision process for British gross
