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In the fourth quarter of 2014, British business investment decreased at its sharpest rate in nearly six years, data from Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed Thursday.
Business investment was estimated to have fallen by 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014. A large part of the fall in business investment came from a fall in investment by the oil and gas extraction industry, said ONS.
"The picture for investment disappointed, with total investment dropping 0.5 percent on a quarterly basis, while business investment saw its biggest fall since the dog-days of the last recession in Q2 2009," said Martin Beck, senior economic adviser to the EY ITEM Club.
"That said, falling investment by the oil and gas extraction industry was a large component of the latter decrease. And Q4's number still left annual growth at the strongest rate since 2007," said Beck.
Meanwhile, Britain's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0.5 percent in Q4 2014 quarter-on-quarter, unrevised from the previous estimate. It was the slowest quarterly growth rate in a year.
Data also showed GDP increased by 2.7 percent in Q4 2014 year-on-year. Britain's economy grew 2.6 percent in 2014 as a whole, compared with 2013, said ONS.
The current 2011-based weights of the four industries' outputs are 78.4 percent (services), 14.6 percent (production), 6.4 percent (construction), and 0.6 percent (agriculture) respectively.
"The second estimate of Q4 GDP confirms that the recovery slowed at the tail end of 2014, but has become better balanced," said Samuel Tombs, the senior Britain economist in Capital Economics, a London-based economic research company.
Tombs believed the latest GDP data need not ring any alarm regarding the strength or sustainability of the Britain economy's recovery.
"We still think that strong growth in real household incomes and investment will enable the recovery to regain some pace this year, with even exports showing stronger growth in 2015," said Tombs.
