UK business investment sees longest decline in decade: ONS

LONDON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Friday that UK Business Investment has fallen for four cONSecutive quarters for the first time since 2009.

There have been upward revisiONS to Business Investment in the third and fourth quarters of last year because of late survey returns, but Business Investment still fell in every quarter of 2018, resulting in an annual drop of 0.4 percent, according to the ONS.

Poor performance was driven mainly by declines in transport equipment as well as IT equipment and other machinery, the ONS said.

This weakness appears to "primarily reflect Brexit and associated uncertainty," and "almost 70 percent of the slowdown" in Business Investment could be accounted for by the country's exit from the EU, the ONS said by quoting a Bank of England analysis.

The ONS revised growth for the third quarter of 2018 to 0.7 percent, slightly up from the previous 0.6 percent, partly attributing the growth to one-off effects of the warm weather and the FIFA World Cup. The growth rates for the other three quarters remain unchanged.

The latest estimates show that the UK's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by an unrevised 1.4 percent in 2018, the lowest since 2012, down from 1.8 percent in 2017. The UK had the third lowest growth rate among the G7 countries in 2018 ahead of Japan and Italy.