The UK Government is due to announce today a substantial increase in funding for the NHS in England. But what might the announcements mean for the Scottish budget – and how will they change the financial outlook for the Scottish Government which it set out in its Five Year Fiscal Strategy last month?Continue reading
Category: Scottish Economy
Grant Allan & Stuart McIntyre
http://www.nowcastingscotland.com
Fraser of Allander Institute, University of Strathclyde
Slightly later than usual, here are our monthly nowcasts of the Scottish economy, covering the first two quarters of 2018.
Our model suggests that:
- GVA growth in 2018 Q1 was 0.29%, or at an annual rate 1.18%
- GVA growth in 2018 Q2 is 0.29%, or at an annual rate 1.16%
Later on this month the Scottish Government will release official estimates covering the first three months of 2018, against which we can compare our Q1 estimate.
Duncan Whitehead is the EY Lead for Economic Advisory in Scotland – DWhitehead2@uk.ey.com.
He is also a visiting researcher at the Fraser of Allander Institute.
The views expressed in this blog are those of Duncan. The blog summarises the latest findings from the EY Scotland Attractiveness Survey 2018 report.
Scotland continues to build on its recent strong FDI performance…
The latest findings from EY’s FDI attractiveness programme shows that Scotland recorded a 7% increase in the number of FDI projects secured, rising from 108 in 2016 to a 10-year high of 116. This means the number of inward investment projects in Scotland has reached new records in each of past three years.
In its latest forecasts, published last week, the SFC revised down its forecast for Scottish income tax revenues by £209m compared to its previous forecast in December.
In questioning the SFC on Wednesday this week, MSPs on the Finance and Constitution Committee seemed unanimously incredulous about this. That a forecast could be revised, in a relatively short period of time, by what is (in political terms) a significant sum, seemed difficult to fathom – particularly when the broader forecasts of economic output and employment had remained unchanged.
So why was the forecast revised down by £209m? Is the justification for the revisions reasonable? How significant are the revisions? And to what extent are we likely to see revisions of similar scale at future budget events?Continue reading
At the end of the month, we will get new data on Scottish GDP. Recent statistics have been disappointing with the economy growing by just 0.8% in 2017.
One of the main drivers of the weak performance in 2017 was the sharp fall in construction output.
Digging into the data reveals that this is because infrastructure spending in Scotland fell by around 25% between 2015 and 2017. In this blog, we discuss the possible reasons behind this and the impact on Scotland’s headline growth estimates.Continue reading