"Despite our estimates indicating a strong start of 2017, we expect economic growth to soften to 1.7% this year"
NIESR’s latest quarterly forecast projected GDP growth of 2% per annum for 2016 and 1.7% in 2017.
Oriol Carreras, Research Fellow at NIESR, said: “Our estimates suggest economic output in the three months ending in January 2017 was 0.7% higher than in the previous three months. Growth was driven by robust consumer spending combined with a pickup in output in production industries.
"This represents the first expansion of production, on a three month on three month rolling basis, since September 2016. Despite our estimates indicating a strong start of 2017, we expect economic growth to soften to 1.7% this year as rising consumer price inflation weighs on consumer spending.”
