The table here shows that since February 2020, the British economy has been displaying dismal performance. February was the month when the coronavirus outbreak struck the nation and was declared a serious health threat. GDP grew by zero per cent during the month of February 2020, over the same month last year. The construction output fell by 1.8 per cent for the same month, and it was the worst performing GDP constituent during February.
For March 2020, the UK economic output shrunk by 6.9 per cent overall; and sharpest output fall for the month came from the components of ‘index of services’ (-7.5 per cent), construction (-5.4 per cent) and manufacturing (-5.2 per cent). It is pertinent to note here that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had imposed a nationwide lockdown on 23 March 2020.
April 2020 was the record worst performing month when the total output shrunk by 20.3 per cent, construction output dropped by 40.2 per cent, and the manufacturing output depicted a negative growth rate of 24.4 per cent. It was also the first complete month of lockdown across Britain.
May was also yet another month of the lockdown with mild lifting up of the ongoing restrictions.?Government allowed people to go to their offices, in case they could not work from home, beginning 11 May 2020. With this, some economic activity resumed at construction and manufacturing sites as well.?While the economic output started to rise gradually, the manufacturing component showed a growth of 8.4 per cent while the construction activity grew by 8.2 per cent for the month.?The only GDP component that exhibited a negative growth rate in output for May 2020 was?agriculture (-6.2 per cent).
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