Retail drives boost in new orders
Northern Ireland’s retail sector led the local economy on new orders, new data has found.
The number of new orders increased for the third month running in July, albeit at a weaker pace than in June. The sharpest increase was among retailers while construction saw a decline.
According to the Ulster Bank Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), employment is on the rise, although not in the retail sector – one of the few not to hire more staff.
And while employment was up by 10,000 jobs since last July, the increase is much weaker than the UK average.
More than 12 per cent of respondents to the Ulster Bank survey registered job creation in July, while six per cent recorded a fall in employment.
Northern Ireland still lags significantly behind all other UK regions for output and business activity, contributing just 2.2 per cent of the UK’s Gross Value Added.
The report came within days of consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) predicting poor growth in NI will continue.
It said low productivity remained the single biggest challenge to Northern Ireland’s sustained recovery.
And worse, PwC’s chief economist Esmond Birnie said the pace of recovery was “decelerating”.
“Over the past seven months business confidence has been mixed, sometimes negative but always lagging the GB regions,” Mr Birnie said.
“There have also been recent mixed messages around consumer confidence, with June 2015 seeing the first rise in unemployment for more than two years; this may simply be a blip – or it may be indicative of a deeper malaise.
“PwC forecasts that Northern Ireland’s economic growth will remain the lowest of the 12 UK regions at around 1.8 per cent in 2015 – lower than the 2.2 per cent growth experienced in 2014 – and will fall again in 2016 to around 1.7 per cent.”
