Britain's major employer circles today announced that, with Brexit, the total amount of investment to be made by British companies in 2019 would remain at the lowest level of the last decade. Even if Prime Minister Theresa May was able to take Britain out of the EU within an agreement will not be enough to change that fact.
On the other hand, it was previously predicted by the UK Chamber of Commerce that investments will decrease by 1% compared to the previous period.
Adam Marshall, President of Britain's Chamber of Commerce said that the decline in investments would also trigger the negative conditions which may cause constriction in the production and freezing of the wages. Stating that political uncertainty has already affected many firms negatively on investment and employment, Marshall added that some companies have even moved their investment and growth projects out of the country and that these investments are likely to never return to the UK.
Some financial companies are already moving many of their operations to other EU member countries and the automotive manufacturers are reducing their expansion targets. In a statement, the BMW company announced that it will move some of its products out of the country in case Brexit takes place without an agreement. Investments in 2018 declined steadily in all four quarters. According to official data, there has been a decline of the longest term in investments since the last global crisis.
Finance Minister Philip Hammond, on the other hand, stated that after the completion of the Brexit agreement, he believes that these figures would move back to an upward trend. However, The Chamber of Commerce is not equally optimistic about the issue. Investments are not expected to recover rapidly again due to the reasons such as the fact that starting a business in the UK after Brexit would become more costly and the uncertainities how the economic relations with the EU would follow.
The Chamber of Commerce announced in its previous estimates that the 2020 business investment amount was expected to increase by 0.6% and in 2021 by 1.1%. Now, the general economic growth forecast was revised from 1.3% to 1.2%. For the years 2020 and 2021, a very small increase was predicted and economic growth was predicted at 1.3% and 1.4%, respectively.
Another area of similar stagnation was the real estate market. In London, the real-estate market declined by 1.1% last month. It is stated that the political uncertainty still continuing as the deadline approaches caused buyers naturally to take a cautious attitude.