British economy shrinks, but not into recession

From Jim Boulden and Bharati Naik, CNN
London (CNN) -
The British economy shrank by an estimated 0.2% in the last quarter of 2011, the Office of National Statistics announced Wednesday, but the country is not yet in recession because growth was positive in the quarter before that.

Recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

Britain's economy grew by 0.9% overall in 2011, the office said, but many economists expect the economy is also shrinking this quarter, which would mean Britain enters recession in the first half of 2012.

The latest figures "are not entirely unexpected because of what's happening in the world, what's happening in the eurozone crisis," said British Finance Minister George Osborne.

During debate in the House of Commons Wednesday, opposition leader Ed Miliband accused the government of caring more about austerity than finding way to grow the economy.

"How bad do things have to be with our economy before it shakes him out of his complacency?" Miliband asked, referring to Prime Minister David Cameron.

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund revised its growth projections for the U.K. in 2012 to just 0.6% of GDP, down from the previous prediction of 1.6%. Still, that is higher than the IMF's projections for France and Germany.

"Now Britain has substantial economic problems, debt built over the last 10 years. We are dealing with those," said Osborne. "But the truth is, dealing with those problems is made more difficult by the situation in the eurozone."

Britain has the seventh-largest economy in the world, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.



These people are waisting their time on paying people to do studys about how their economy goes down and stuff they dont need, paying a lot of money instead of making new companies and giving a nice job to everyone while they recive enough money to sourvive... The other day I was reading in the news paper that there are gonna be 200 million people unenployed this year and thre is people that is earning annualy what to some people would be 1000 times theire salary. Whats wrong with the gobernments that let this happen??? They should have any kind of job for everybody, but they prefer to pay the president enough money to pay all the people... so they could live in a nice unworried way. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, GOBERNMENTS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???? Comment by me, R.R.