Although the UK unemployment remained unchanged at 7.8 percent for the three months ending in July, the actual number of unemployed fell by 8,000 to 2.47 million according to latest employment figures from the Office for National Statistics. Despite the slight improvement, many analysts fear that employment will worsen later this year as the government implements a series of planned spending cuts.
Source: BBC News
Further evidence to the weak pace of recovery in the UK came today in the form of the latest industrial output figures. For the month of January, output unexpectedly fell by 0.4 percent compared to the previous month, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The result set off a minor shock wave as official estimates predicted a 0.3 percent increase.
On the positive side, year-on-year manufacturing actually increased 0.2 percent. Based on this, some analysts attempted to downplay the report, suggesting January’s result was simple a “rogue” number in what has otherwise been a string of monthly increases.
“The only comforting feature with manufacturing is that all the surveys show the output trend to be positive, which gives us confidence that January’s official reading is a bit of a rogue number,” noted Investec economist Philip Shaw.
Source: BBC News
China recorded a remarkable 46 percent increase in exports in February compared to the same month one year ago. The actual result was considerably higher than the earlier predictions of 35 to 40 percent and is likely to increase pressure from the US calling for the People’s Bank of China to allow the yen to appreciate.
For the past 18 months, China has pegged the yen to the US dollar. For American consumers particularly, this means that the cost of goods imported from China have remained unchanged and this certainly contributed to the impressive gains experienced by China. Naturally, this has also increased China’s trade gap with the US, and is sure to elicit further calls from the Obama administration to allow the yuan to increase in value.
“The recovery seems to have gained legs and this will give China’s government more confidence to start revaluing the yuan,” said Ren Xianfang, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Beijing.
However, China’s central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, said at the weekend that the government was “very cautious” about easing exchange rate controls because the global economic outlook was still uncertain.
Source: BBC News
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