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(Alliance News) - Despite a weaker end to the year due to the Omicron wave of virus infection, figures on Friday the UK economy staged an impressive rebound in 2021 after a pandemic-battered 2020.
For 2021 overall, the Office for National Statistics said gross domestic product increased by 7.5% following a 9.4% fall in 2020.
GDP shrank 0.2% month-on-month in December, beating forecasts after expectations of a 0.6% decline, according to market consensus cited by FXStreet. This still marked a deterioration from growth of 0.7% in November.
Services output fell by 0.5% in December but remained 0.5% above pre-virus levels. The sector was dented by the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in December, which saw a wave of hospitality cancellations as jitters over the virus grew ahead of Christmas and swathes of the population had to self isolate.
"GDP fell back slightly in December as the Omicron wave hit with retail and hospitality seeing the biggest impacts. However, these were partially offset by increases in the Test and Trace service and vaccination programmes," said Darren Morgan, ONS director of Economic Statistics.
"Despite December's setback, GDP grew robustly across the fourth quarter as a whole," he added.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, GDP grew 1.0% on a sequential basis, at this level 0.4% below pre-pandemic times. However, the ONS noted that December's monthly GDP figure matched pre-coronavirus levels.
November 2021 remains the first month that GDP recovered to above its pre-coronavirus levels, by 0.3%.
By Lucy Heming; lucyheming@alliancenews.com
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