UK: Britain needs more migrant labor to boost productivity as it faces a toxic mix of soaring inflation and shrinking growth, the country’s main business lobby group warned Monday.
The verdict from the Confederation of British Industry came at its annual gathering in Birmingham, Britain’s second biggest city.
The CBI conference comes after the Government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week slashed spending and hiked taxes in a budget, despite admitting that the inflation-wracked economy had fallen into recession.
“We come together, once more in extraordinary times,” CBI Director-General Tony Danker told delegates in Birmingham, central England. “Britain is in the middle of stagflation — rocketing inflation and negative growth — for the first time that probably most of us can remember.
UK inflation sits at a 41-year peak of 11.1 percent on rocketing food and energy costs in the wake of the Ukraine war.
Consumer prices have raced higher also as demand rebounds following the lifting of pandemic lockdowns.
That has worsened a Cost-of-Living crisis for businesses and individuals, hit also by soaring interest rates as the Bank of England seeks to cool runaway inflation. Prime Minister Sunak also told CBI delegates that the budget sought “to grip inflation and balance the books”. – JAPAN TODAY
by Daily News Sri Lanka
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