'The recession may be over'
Updated on 10 June 2009
The recession may be over, according to a report by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research.
The NIESR assessment is based on its own monthly figures for GDP growth, which show that growth returned in April (0.2 per cent) of this year and continued in May (0.1 per cent).
Alan Clark, UK economist with Paribas, commented: “We are accumulating more and more evidence that the recession is over.”
“To be clear, we are not heading for a boom. The economy is still likely to grow much slower than potential… The point is, the economy is no longer shrinking.”
The driver for growth has been the stock cycle, which makes it hard to assess whether or not growth will be sustained in coming months, a fact acknowledged by NIESR Director Martin Weale. "So far as we can say, the recession is over, but there might be another downward dip."
Writing in his blog, Channel 4 News economics correspondent Faisal Islam notes: “Few could have predicted as serious an outfit as Niesr calling a technical end to recession in June. Puts the cat among the pigeons politically, too.”
