There’s mixed news for the Scottish economy. Official statistics show that Scotland’s GDP grew by 0.4% in the last quarter. If you compare these figures with to the same period last year then, on an annual basis, the economy grew by 1.2%. This was slightly faster than for the UK as a whole.
The figures show that service industries – especially financial and insurance activities – grew the most, up by 0.8%. However, production grew by only by 0.1% and construction actually fell by 2.5%. Other sectors, such as distribution, hotels and catering and retail also fell over the same period.
Michael Moore
Scottish Secretary
Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore, argued that Scotland was “benefiting from the security, scale and influence provided by the UK, pooling resources from a UK wide tax base, unrestricted access to a single domestic market from which we do two thirds of our trade with the same regulation in Wick as in Weymouth.”
However, the Scottish Minister for Enterprise, Fergus Ewing, insisted that, while the economy continued to grow faster than the UK, “we cannot allow Westminster’s continued pursuit of austerity over economic recovery to derail the positive developments we are seeing in Scotland.”
Fergus Ewing MSP
The positive results were tempered by the news that unemployment in Scotland had increased for the first time this year, bringing a run of seven consecutive falls to an end. The number looking for work here increased by 8,000 to 205,000 in the months from March to May, as opposed to a fall of 57,000 across the UK as a whole. But the number of people employed in Scotland rose by 4,000 and now stands at 2,511,000.
Looking forward however, a survey from the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI) suggests that a growing number of businesses the country expect to recruit extra people over the coming year. It found that 38% of private sector employers expected to increase employment over the next 12 months – up from 27% just six months ago.
Commenting on the figures, Andy Willox, the Federation of Small Businesses’ (FSB) Scottish Policy Convenor, said that they showed “yet another indication of a tentative economic recovery north of the border.” He added that “the FSB’s latest research shows that there’s lot of work to be done north of the border to use the public sector’s spending power as a means to sustain and develop our local business communities. The Scottish Government’s forthcoming Procurement Reform Bill, and associated reform programme, must be squarely focused on effectively using public spending to boost Scottish business growth.”