{"id":831635,"date":"2026-11-11T22:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T22:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/831635\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T22:50:13","slug":"uk-economic-growth-expected-to-have-picked-up-amid-ai-and-defence-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/831635\/","title":{"rendered":"UK economic growth expected to have picked up amid AI and defence drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Economists<\/a> Economists were expecting to see growth accelerate to 0.7% for the third quarter (Yui Mok\/PA) (PA Wire) <\/p>\n

UK economic growth is expected to have accelerated in the third quarter as a spending drive on AI and defence helps stave off a cost-of-living slowdown. <\/p>\n

The Office for National Statistics<\/a> (ONS) is set to publish the latest gross domestic product (GDP) figures on Thursday. <\/p>\n

Economists are expecting to see growth pick up to 0.7% for the third quarter \u2013 between July and September \u2013 following growth of 0.5% in the second quarter. <\/p>\n

Growth has been boosted by business investment, with spending on areas such as technology, infrastructure and defence becoming a key source of growth in the economy, experts think. <\/p>\n

\"Data<\/a> Data centres were among the key sectors boosting business investment, experts said (Yui Mok\/PA) (PA Archive) <\/p>\n

This is helping to offset the impact of higher energy prices on households and businesses since the start of the Iran<\/a> war. <\/p>\n

The AI spending boom was a contributor to higher GDP<\/a> in July, with the ONS revealing that many of the businesses reporting the largest turnover were involved in activities related to AI and cloud computing. <\/p>\n

Sanjay Raja, chief UK economist for Deutsche Bank<\/a>, said there were a few key sectors that were boosting business investment \u2013 data centres and IT, defence and aircraft. <\/p>\n

“Consumers<\/a> have also been out in force, despite the energy shock,” he said. <\/p>\n

“And businesses have remained fairly confident regardless of still-elevated geopolitical uncertainty.” <\/p>\n

\"There<\/a> There were calls to protect hospitality workers (Alamy\/PA) (Alamy\/PA) <\/p>\n

Economists are expecting growth in other areas of the economy such as hospitality, which benefited from a spending boost over the summer, and healthcare activity. <\/p>\n

That could be helping offset weaknesses in sectors that are more likely to be squeezed by higher energy prices and borrowing costs, such as manufacturing and construction. <\/p>\n

But Mr Raja cautioned that growth is set to slow over the final quarter of 2026 as higher inflation and interest rates begin to weigh. <\/p>\n

“Looking ahead, we expect the UK economic growth story to have cooled a bit,” he said. <\/p>\n

But he said there had been “surprisingly resilient” survey data into November and added that pre-Budget uncertainty was kept to a minimum this year, which may have kept business activity more stable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Economists were expecting to see growth accelerate to 0.7% for the third quarter (Yui Mok\/PA) (PA Wire) UK…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[11456,84,273,1294,4176,5555,1086,13908,5467,4377,1891,4517,4174,4769,4655,4204,4762,5556,5557,3356,5042,474,13909,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-831635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-401k","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-financial-information","tag-investing","tag-investment-tools","tag-investor","tag-market-news","tag-mortgage","tag-mutual-funds","tag-personal-finance","tag-quote","tag-real-estate","tag-retirement","tag-stock","tag-stock-research","tag-stock-valuation","tag-stocks","tag-suze-orman","tag-tax","tag-track-portfolio","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}