The forecast growth by PwC projects the UK economic calendar growth to be at 1.8% in 2017, the weakest growth since 2012, when it was 1.5%.
The PwC, an accountancy and professional services firm, has a “nowcasting” model, and said on Friday that in the latter part of 2017, GDP grew by just 0.4%.
This would put economic calendar growth at 1.8%, which is down by 0.1% from 2016, the slowest UK economic growth rate in five years. In 2012, when UK economic growth was at 1.5% the Eurozone was at peak crisis.
Due to rising inflation due to the drop in sterling following the result of the 2016 EU Referendum, household spending and disposable incomes have squeezed.
It was reported last year the inflation was also at a five-year high, at 2.9%.
And the latest findings aren’t too unfamiliar with similar reports, with a study last year predicting a similar lag being the EU economy for the UK.
John Hawksworth, Chief Economist at PwC, said: “There is no infallible way to estimate current GDP growth, but our nowcasting model uses the latest machine learning techniques. This allows us to look at a very broad range of explanatory variables, ahead of official preliminary estimates, in order to estimate how fast the economy is growing.”
Moreover, UK business investment has also been affected, as firms wait to discover the UK’s fate with the Brexit negotiations. It is unclear on what terms the UK will be trading with the EU moving forward.