Manufacturing growth limits economy shrinkage

This performance helped rescue the country from an even more dire performance than the 0.5% GDP shrinkage it saw in the last quarter of 2010, according to figures issued by the ONS today. By comparison, the previous quarter returned GDP growth of 0.7%, with manufacturing contributing 1.1% to that. Overall, production output rose 0.9% in the last quarter of 2010, within which manufacturing sits. A collapse in construction, with the sector shrinking 3.3%, was key, with this the weakest performer in the final quarter of the last year. Second to the construction sector's lacklustre performance was output from services, which decreased by 0.5% in the fourth quarter, compared with a rise of 0.5% in the previous one. The largest contribution to the decline was from business services and finance, said ONS.