The Economy Club

The United Kingdom has reported the highest rate of borrowings in April, something which Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician at the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has said, “was pretty much unprecedented”.  Government borrowings were essential to meet furlough schemes which amounted to £14 billion in April 2020 itself. With the government borrowing help, it would have been extremely difficult to move ahead in corona virus times, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has substantiated. Technically, the difference between the spending and the tax income has been recorded as the highest ever in a month, than forecasted for a whole year in the government budgets; i.e. six times of a predictable figure.  Read More...

The COVID-19 outbreak and its subsequent lockdown have exponentially hammered the economic activity in the European Union. In order to contain the Coronavirus transmission , European countries were forced to block business activities and manufacturing operations that led to an inevitable sharp economic downturn. EU Commission’s forecast has stated that the bloc is facing the deepest recession since the Great Depression, with a 7.5% decline in the economic activity. Significantly, European countries are working on reopening their economies to restart their businesses after several weeks of lockdown. Attempting to break the deadlock over rescuing the economy in the region, Germany and France jointly proposed the creation of a recovery fund worth €500 billion ($543 billion) to support the economic revival.  Read More...