17 August 2015

Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment - Northern Ireland - August economic update

A concise update from DETI summarises the main trends and events arising each month within the local, national and global economies.

Results for Q1 2015 from the Northern Ireland Composite Economic Index (NICEI) reveal that overall economic activity increased by 1.1% from Q4 2014. There has been growth reported in three of the last four quarters, with the rate of growth in the four quarters to Q1 2015 estimated to be 1.6% higher on average compared to the previous four quarters.

The NI Construction Bulletin highlighted that the total volume of construction output in NI in Q1 2015 increased by 6.5% compared to Q4 2014 and was 13.8% higher compared to the same quarter in 2014. The increase in the overall output was accounted for by both an increase in New Work (6.5%) and a similar increase in Repair & Maintenance (6.7%).

Following the first increase in 28 months in June, the number of people claiming unemployment benefit has again fallen by 400 in July 2015. The local unemployment rate for the period April to June 2015 is 6.5%, above the UK rate of 5.6% but below both European Union (9.6%) and RoI (9.8%) rates for May 2015.

The latest results from UK Trade and Investment for 2014/15 revealed that NI attracted 48 projects and based on jobs created, is still the largest FDI destination per capita outside of London.

Locally PWC forecast NI’s economic growth at 1.8% in 2015, lower than 2014 performance of 2.2%. This is reflective of a ‘decelerating’ recovery, the challenge of implementing welfare reform and weak productivity. Elsewhere, the Q2 2015 results from the NI Chamber of Commerce (NICC) survey highlighted continued economic improvement with healthy growth in domestic sales and uplift in recruitment intentions for the quarter.