Peston warns of trouble in store as UK’s recovery ‘based on shopping’

BBC business editor Robert Peston has said it is concerning that the nation’s economic recovery appears to be based on shopping instead of manufacturing.

The broadcaster, 53, said that it was “a great relief that the British economy is at last showing signs of recovery”.

He told the Radio Times: “But it may be of some concern that the recovery is largely based on revived consumption and shopping, not on sales of goods and services to the rest of the world, or investment in important productive capacity.”

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“If we want to enjoy renewed prosperity that lasts, we need more than thriving retailers: we need to become a nation that makes more of the stuff that goes into our shops, and those of Brazil, Russia and China.”

The broadcaster lamented the fact that Britain’s boom years, from 1992 to 2008, were “powered by debt-fuelled consumption and shopping”.

Peston, who is presenting a new BBC2 show, Peston Goes Shopping, said: “We merrily bought all the cheap stuff made by China’s low-cost factories and watched blithely as our manufacturers closed down – while Germany did the more prudent thing of investing in businesses that made things (Mercs and production plants) that the Chinese wanted to buy.”

He added: “By the time of the great crash of 2008, British people were more indebted – as a share of national income – than the citizens of any other big developed economy, and economic growth had become more reliant than most economies’ (except America’s) on consumer spending.”

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