Business investment in the UK declined in all four quarters of 2018 to complete a year-on-year dive of 2.4 per cent, according to the ONS. These are the worst capital spending figures since the 2008 crisis, and you’ll guess where the Bank of England places the blame: weaker global growth hasn’t helped but the ‘UK-specific factor’ is ‘a growing portion of [companies] putting new capital investment on hold until there is greater clarity around Brexit’.
Amid reports that factories are focused on stockpiling components ‘at the fastest rate on record’, no one expects investment for the first half of 2019 to look stronger. Jürgen Maier, who runs the UK factories of the German industrial giant Siemens, wrote last week that ‘I personally can no longer defend the action of our parliament when reporting to my managing board, making it hard to win support for finely balanced investment decisions that in the end have an impact on UK jobs, innovation and the competitiveness of our activities here’.
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