News that the UK economy is growing at the fastest rate for the last six years will almost certainly bring benefits to the Algarve. A spokesman for leading European financial advice group Blevins Franks told the Algarve Resident this morning that the day’s hot news on Britain’s GDP should affect the Algarve “very positively” in a number of ways. The property sector, particularly, should feel the boost, Blevins Franks’ Adrian Hook told us.
“With the pound strengthened against the euro, more people will come and start looking,” he said. “There is a sense in the UK that things are improving, so that will translate into people taking more holiday opportunities, as well as spending more capital. It will certainly affect us positively.”
Nonetheless, he stressed the fact that “no one should expect the pound to runaway”. The governor of the Bank of England “has sounded a cautionary note, saying that a strong pound is unhelpful to Britain’s balance of trade”, he said. But conversely a ‘weak euro’ is actually very good for anyone exporting goods from Portugal to UK.
“It is all good news,” in other words – and certainly the buzz in the UK is that the tide has finally started to turn.
“We’ve seen growth in most parts of the economy,” Joe Grice, chief economist at the Office for National Statistics said as it published figures that showed the UK’s economy had grown by 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2013, bringing the annual growth rate to 1.9% – the highest since 2007.
Elsewhere, the news that unemployment had also shown a “sharp drop” indicates that Britain is well on the road to financial recovery.
