Britain’s trade gap widens to £9.7b in third quarter

london — Britain’s trade gap widened to the most in more than a year in the third quarter as imports rose to a record, holding back the economic recovery.

The total deficit widened to £9.72 billion from £5.46 billion in the three months through June, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday in London. Exports fell 3.5 per cent and imports increased one per cent to a record £135 billion. A separate report showed construction rose 1.7 per cent in the quarter, less than the 2.5 per cent previously estimated.

Britain’s economic growth accelerated to 0.8 per cent in the third quarter from 0.7 per cent, according to a preliminary estimate last month from the statistics office. It will publish a second estimate of gross domestic product on November 27 and said on Friday the construction revision has a 0.04 percentage point impact on the data. That report will also quantify the negative contribution from net trade on GDP.

The trade report also showed that imports of goods from the European Union increased to a record £55.2 billion in the third quarter, increasing the deficit with the bloc to its widest since the ONS began the data in 1998.

In September, the goods trade deficit widened to £9.82 billion from £9.56 billion in August, the ONS said. Exports declined 0.7 per cent and imports rose 0.2 per cent. The surplus on service widened to £6.55 billion from £6.31 billion, leaving the total trade gap at £3.27 billion.