Mubasher: The UK has revised its gross domestic product (GDP) for the fourth quarter of 2017 to an increase of 0.4%, making this a downward revision of 0.1% compared to the previous preliminary estimate of 0.5% for the period.

This reflects “a small downward revision to the estimated output of the production industries,” the report released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed on Thursday.

The report attributed the 0.4% growth in Q4-17 to business services and finance within the services sector, despite a minor downward revision to services since the preliminary GDP estimate.

“This does not impact on services quarterly growth to one decimal place,” the ONS stated.

As for business investment, growth remained flat quarter-on-quarter in Q4-17; however, a year-on-year reading indicated that business investment grew by 2.1%.

Moreover, for the full-year 2017, the ONS estimate that UK GDP had increased by 1.7% from 2016, which is a downward revision of 0.1% from the preliminary estimate.

It is also slightly lower than the 1.9% rise seen between 2015 and 2016.

In terms of household spending, the latter went up by 1.8% between 2016 and 2017, registering “its slowest rate of annual growth since 2012” although this reflects the rise in prices for consumers.

The reason behind the second released of the UK’s GDP data is that the second quarterly estimate of GDP is “based on additional data but produced later than the preliminary estimate, providing a more precise indication of economic growth,” the ONS states.

By 9:49 am GMT, the EUR/GBP increased 0.27% to GBP 0.8849, while the GBP/USD fell 0.18% to $1.3893.