Britain is on track for a V-shaped recovery as the economy rebounds from the lockdown far faster than expected, the Bank of England’s chief economist has said.
Andy Haldane said the country was already two months into the recovery and that the depth of the coronavirus recession was likely to be less than half as bad as the Bank had feared in May.
Real-time data on payments, traffic flow, energy use and business surveys suggested that “the recovery has come somewhat sooner, and has been materially faster, than in the [Bank’s] May scenario — indeed than any other mainstream macroeconomic forecaster”, Mr Haldane said.
“It is early days, but my reading of the evidence is so far, so V.”
Policymakers and economists have grown increasingly
