Brexit has wiped more than £1bn off the UK’s vast trade deficit due to a post-referendum exports boost
New figures show the latest good news for UK trade was driven by a jump in exports, up by £800million to £43.8billion
BREXIT has shrunk Britain’s massive trade gap due to a post-referendum exports boost, new stats revealed today.
More than a billion has been wiped off the UK’s vast deficit on trade in goods and services since June.
The Office for National Statistics said the gap last month was £4.5billion, shrinking from £5.6billion before the referendum.
The latest good news for UK trade was driven by a jump in exports, up by £800million to £43.8billion.
The decrease in the value of the pound has made UK goods more competitive on the global market, helping our exports to soar.
The trade gap was also helped by a £300million reduction in imports last month, down to £48.3 billion.
Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, said the result adds evidence to post-Brexit Britain’s “current resilience”.
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“A major hope for the UK economy going forward is that the substantial overall weakening of the pound since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June’s referendum will increasingly feed through to boost foreign demand for UK goods and services.”
He added: “While the pound has recently firmed from its post-Brexit vote lows, it is still at an extremely competitive level and is likely to remain so for an extended period.”
The news came as Britain’s construction industry showed a slight recovery in the month after Britain’s historic vote to quit the EU.
The ONS said construction output stalled in July, compared to a 1% drop in activity in June.
A Ukip spokesman today said: “Even those big corporates that funded the remain campaign are now changing their tune about how they say the UK economy is going.”
“This is not the result of panic action by the Government or the Bank of England as some try to claim, but of the health and resilience of the British economy, and the men and women within it who work so hard to make their enterprises successful in a global, not merely European, economy.”