Coronavirus: UK economy recovering gradually, says Bank of England

Bank of England (BOE) governor, Andrew Bailey, stated that there are signs of the UK economy gradually improving and that the bank wants to support the country to get through the damage done by the COVID-19 outbreak.

We are on the mend!! UK economy slowly recovering, says Bank of England chief https://t.co/sWa2Supe8x via @YahooFinanceUK

— GeoVision (@Visiongeo) June 13, 2020

In an interview with Sky News, he stated: “It’s early days and I don’t want to emphasize too much” but there is “a gradual coming back into life… we do see those signs.”

According to him, the big question is not how swiftly the economy recovers but how much damage is going to be for the long-term and that’s what the bank needs to be very focused on because that’s how the damage is done to peoples jobs and livelihoods.

This was following the Office for National Statistics (ONS) claimed that in April, the UK’s GDP fell by 20.4%, the largest fall since the beginning of monthly records in 1997, “reflecting record widespread fall in services, production and construction output”.

On Wednesday, it was warned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that the United Kingdom’s economy could be one of the worst affected by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The OECD said that If there is no second wave of the virus, the UK economy will shrink by 11.5% in 2020, the steepest decline due to being affected by any of the 37 members of the organization. But Laurence Boone, OECD chief economist, stated that it was tough to accurately predict the exact impact.