Britain’s goods trade deficit with the rest of the world unexpectedly widened to its highest in nearly a year in December, after imports from non-EU countries shot up at their fastest rate since March 2005.
The figures from the Office for National Statistics also showed that Britain’s trade deficit for 2009 as a whole narrowed for the first year since 1997 after the global recession caused both imports and exports to fall at their fastest rate in over 50 years.
The ONS said that Britain’s goods trade gap widened to 7.278 billion pounds from 6.798 billion, its highest level since January 2009. Economists had forecast a deficit of 6.63 billion pounds.
The widening in the deficit was driven by a 7.6 percent month-on-month increase in non-EU imports, which was the biggest since March 2005. Some 300 million pounds of the roughly 1 billion pound increase in imports was oil-related, and another 225 million was linked to aircraft.
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