(Reuters) - Britain's economy may have entered a mild recession in the last three months of 2011, hampering the government's core policy aim of spurring growth and raising the chances that the Bank of England will inject more cash soon. Britain's recovery from the 2008/2009 recession - the deepest since the depression-hit 1930s - has already been sluggish, and unemployment has crept up to a 17-year high as the government cuts spending deeply to erase a huge budget deficit.The economy shrank by 0.2 percent at the end of 2011, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, a bit more than economists expected as a stagnating services sector failed to offset a slump in manufacturing and construction.
(Reuters) - Britain's economy may have entered a mild recession in the last three months of 2011, hampering the government's core policy aim of spurring growth and raising the chances that the Bank of England will inject more cash soon.
Britain's recovery from the 2008/2009 recession - the deepest since the depression-hit 1930s - has already been sluggish, and unemployment has crept up to a 17-year high as the government cuts spending deeply to erase a huge budget deficit.
The economy shrank by 0.2 percent at the end of 2011, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, a bit more than economists expected as a stagnating services sector failed to offset a slump in manufacturing and construction.
