British retail sales fell at the fastest pace in almost a year, house prices continued to drop and firms expect to hire only a small number of extra staff, data showed, implying a slow and tentative recovery.
The downbeat message from the three surveys chimed with Bank of England governor Mervyn King's warning last week that Britain can expect a choppy return to health after a shock contraction late last year.
There was no reaction to the data on financial markets, which are not pricing in any rise in borrowing costs until later this year. Economists said the figures, which came on the heels of a soft survey of service sector activity last week, injected an element of doubt into how soon rates would start going up.
"We had been gravitating towards a hike, in terms of the voting pattern and rhetoric of the MPC, but the data have nudged that back a bit on balance," said Ross Walker, economist at RBS.
"This week's decision looks a little bit more straightforward, that is, no change. And maybe, with oil price developments, the general situation looks a bit softer. So although (a rate increase in) May is our forecast, it's not a done deal."
Mr King and other BoE policymakers - expected to keep interest rates on hold at a record low on Thursday - are under pressure to take bolder action to curb consumer price inflation running at double its 2 per cent target. However, the central bank has repeatedly warned that it must avoid choking off the fragile recovery by tightening policy too soon as it tries to cut inflation.
The risks were highlighted by February's weak retail sales figures from the British Retail Consortium, which fell at their fastest annual pace in 10 months.
The trade body said like-for-like retail sales were 0.4 per cent lower in February compared to a year ago, after a 2.3 per cent rise in January. It blamed the fall on declining household incomes and fears about the economic outlook at a time of public spending cuts and tax rises.
"Customers are cautious and are cutting back in a big way on non-essential spending," said BRC director general Stephen Robertson.
House prices in England and Wales continued to fall in February, although at their slowest pace since July, a second survey said.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' seasonally adjusted house price balance rose to -26 from -31, reflecting a 26 percentage point gap between the proportion of surveyors reporting price falls over the past three months and the number seeing price rises.
This was marginally higher than economists' forecasts of a reading of -27, but analysts said the outlook for the housing market remained poor.
"With unemployment rising, confidence fragile and the threat of higher interest rates growing, it is hard to see what will prevent both the housing market and high street spending from weakening further this year," said Ed Stansfield, property economist at Capital Economics.
Surveyors reported wide regional differences, with London prices rising for the first time in seven months while Wales experienced widespread price falls.
"Rather ominously, we have probably yet to feel the full impact of the public spending cuts which are likely to lead to further divergence in the regional property market," said RICS spokesman Jeremy Leaf.
On the jobs front, a small majority of British companies said they planned to hire extra staff in the next three months, according to a survey by recruitment company Manpower.
Its employment outlook survey was steady for a second consecutive quarter, with a seasonally adjusted net balance of 2 per cent of firms planning to recruit between April and June.
The most optimistic sector was finance and business services. The most negative was the public sector, which saw its lowest reading since the recession of the early 1990s.
"There is no doubt that the outlook in the public sector has not been this stark for almost 20 years," said Mark Cahill, managing director of Manpower UK.
Britain's economy suffered a surprise 0.6 per cent contraction in the final quarter of 2010 and the number of Britons claiming unemployment benefit rose in January for the first time in four months. |
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