U.K. businesses ignore the political ‘noise’, need clarity on Brexit: BCC
As the U.K. comes closer to the start of the process to leave the European Union, U.K. businesses are ignoring the political talk, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce stated.
The higher house in the U.K. parliament defeated a government bill on Tuesday for a second time, demanding to vote on the final Brexit deal. However, British businesses do not seem to pay attention to such developments, Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce told CNBC, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce told CNBC.
“A lot of them are trying to ignore the politicians. They want to look at the signal not the noise,” he said.
His findings are based on several meetings between the BCC and entrepreneurs.
Marshall told CNBC that the businesses told him that they “will of course pay attention to when Article 50 is triggered; I will of course pay attention to what we achieve in these negotiations because that will affect my business materially but until I see that I’m getting on with things.”
More important than starting negotiations is getting some clarity as to how the future EU- U.K. relationship will be.
“Businesses want some certainty,” Marshall added.
According to media reports, the U.K. government is set to announce Wednesday rosier economic forecasts when the finance minister Philip Hammond presents his latest budget.
“The impacts of Brexit are going to be felt in the medium term. They’re not going to be felt right away,” Marshall warned. “My expectation is that we will see reasonable growth both this year in 2017 and next year in 2018. The real question for me is what happens to UK growth in 2019 after the two-year period for the Article 50 negotiations is complete, that’s when the unknowns really start to kick in.”
The latest economic forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility OBR – the Treasury’s independent forecaster, pointed to a 1.4 percent growth rate for this year.
Source: CNBC
