Scotland’s growth joint lowest

Scotland is expected to have the lowest economic growth among the 12 UK regions in 2018, alongside Northern Ireland, a report out today says.

Scottish growth is expected to be just 1 per cent this year, before recovering to 1.2 per cent in 2019. “Despite this, Scotland will continue to lag behind the UK average of 1.6 per cent,” says accountancy major Pwc’s latest UK Economic Outlook.

The report says Scottish manufacturing’s contribution to gross value added (GVA) – regional economic growth – is the lowest in the UK, at -0.2 per cent, from 2009-17.

Scotland is the only UK region not to grow its manufacturing output, with the UK average increase being 0.6 per cent, and lagging behind top performers such as Wales, up 3.1 per cent, and the Midlands, up 2.8 per cent.

But Scotland has the third highest contribution to GVA (0.7 per cent) across professional, technical and scientific services.

Today’s report adds that Scotland saw the highest house price growth over the past year, at 7.7 per cent – three times that of London at 2.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Scottish labour market showed faster employment expansion than six of the 12 UK regions during 2017, in line with the UK average of 0.6 per cent.

Lindsay Gardiner, the regional chairman at PWC in Scotland, said: “The latest [economic outlook] presents a mixed picture for Scotland.

“While our economic performance is expected to pick up next year and we’ve enjoyed steady employment growthduring2017,theanalysis also shows that Scotland is the only area of the UK not to grow its manufacturing contribution over the past two decades.”