The UK would outperform its struggling European peers in the next 15 years, helping it to cling onto its place among the world’s biggest economies, according to long-term projections by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).
The UK and France would remain in sixth and seventh position by 2039, respectively, as Germany, Italy and Spain slip down the leaderboard, the London-based economics consultancy predicted.
The upbeat assessment would be welcomed by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after official figures this week showed the economy has failed to grow since his Labour Party took power in July.
Photo: Bloomberg
GDP was unchanged in the three months through September, the Office for National Statistics said on Monday, a downgrade from its previous estimate of 0.1 percent growth.
The Bank of England predicted the economy would record zero growth in the final three months of this year, while purchasing manager surveys have painted a gloomy picture.
Starmer is hoping his plans to deliver the fastest sustained growth in the G7, through a blitz of planning reforms, housebuilding and public investment, would eventually pay dividends after a rocky start for the Labour Party. However, the CEBR suggested that problems would continue to hamper the UK economy.
“While this outlook is markedly better than key European peers like France and Germany, both of whom are expected to slip, this reflects a relatively poorer outlook for Eurozone economies rather than strong UK growth,” the CEBR said.
The CEBR expects the UK to narrow the gap with the poorer-performing German economy over the next 15 years. Europe’s largest economy is expected to be 20 percent larger than the UK’s in 2039, compared with 31 percent bigger now.
Similarly, the UK would outpace France and be 25 percent larger in terms of output by 2039, the CEBR said.
While the CEBR warned that Labour’s tax hikes would mean weaker activity in the short term, it expects the trend growth rate to hit 1.8 percent in the long term.
It expects the US to retain its crown as the world’s largest economy, holding off competition from China.
“We do expect China to eventually claim the top spot, though structural and demographic constraints suggest its tenure as the global economic leader will be brief,” CEBR managing economist and forecasting lead Sam Miley said.
On a per-capita basis, the UK is forecast to edge up a position to 21st place, just behind Malta, Germany and Sweden. Luxembourg is projected to remain the world’s richest nation per capita, followed by Ireland and Switzerland.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS