The ‘Beast from the East’ drove many areas of the UK to a standstill, and it appeared to have affected the UK economy too.
Following the snow in March and weak customer demand, the British economy grew at the slowest rate since just after the vote to leave the European Union in 2016.
The IHS Markit/CIPS services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 51.7 in March, down from 54.5 in February. This was the lowest since July 2016, the month following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.
The fall was bigger than any economist had envisioned according to a Reuters poll. This dictates that the British economy’s growth was just below 0.3%, which is down from an already poor 0.4% to end 2017.
Temperatures were unusually low and snow was torrential in some areas courtesy of Siberia’s beast from the east, which damaged the UK's already poorly performing economy.
Chris Williamson, IHS Markit’s chief business economist, said: “The UK economy iced up in March, suffering the weakest increase in business activity since the Brexit vote amid widespread disruptions caused by some of the heaviest snowfall in years.”
Data suggests that although the euro zone suffered due to the weather in March too, the bloc is still on course to out grow the UK economy, with an estimated growth rate of 0.5%.
Despite this, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee is still expected to raise interest rates next month, in spite of the affect the beast from the east had on businesses.
Businesses and economists will be looking on closely to see how the UK economy bounces back in April and draw more thorough conclusions of the role of the snow in March.
There were hopes that a global boom would provide a boost to the UK economy recently, with a leading economic expert predicting that the boom would outweigh the effects of leaving the European Union.