RHA Road Haulage Association : Economic Bulletin 27 January

More Spain-UK ro-ro ferry crossings

According to Lloydsloadinglist.com Brittany Ferries is increasing its freight services on routes linking the UK and Spain because of increased demand.

From February an all-cargo roll-on, roll-off ship is being brought into service for two weekly round-trips for unaccompanied trailers between Poole and Bilbao.

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Transport and storage jobs under threat from technology

Accountants Deloitte are suggesting that jobs in the transportation and storage sector are more at risk of being automated than jobs in most other sectors of the UK economy over the next twenty years.

The Deloitte report says that around 70% of existing UK transportation and storage jobs (two and a half million in number) may go with work in the accommodation and food services field next most likely to suffer, with 66% of such jobs at risk of being replaced by robots or other technology.

The information and communication sector is reported as least likely to have jobs automated with around 8% of jobs likely to go.

Across the UK the report says 11 million jobs will disappear because of advances in technology.

You can read the report here.

Interest rates may stay low for longer

In the wake of turbulence in the financial markets and poor news on global growth, governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney has indicated that UK interest rates are likely to remain low well into 2016 with the possibility that a rate rise could be put off until 2017.

The governor commented: 'Last summer I said that a decision as to when to start raising [the] Bank rate would likely come into sharper relief around the turn of the year … Well, the year has turned and, in my view, the decision proved straightforward - now is not the time to raise interest rates.'

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Unemployment rate lowest since 2005

The unemployment rate was 5.1% in the three months to November according to the Office for National Statistics, the lowest it has been since 2005.

Average weekly earnings for employees in Great Britain increased by 2.0% including bonuses and by 1.9% excluding bonuses compared with a year earlier.

Martin Beck, senior economic advisor to the EY ITEM Club, the forecasting body of accountancy firm EY told the BBC: 'The latest pay numbers will exacerbate concerns raised in recent MPC [Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England] meetings that very low inflation may be pushing down pay settlements, threatening a negative feedback between wages and prices. That the first post-crisis rate hike may be pushed back into 2017 is looking an ever-more realistic possibility.'

Eurozone expansion slows

The economy of the eurozone nations expanded at its weakest rate for nearly a year according to the January Markit Flash Eurozone PMI survey which is based on data collected earlier in the month.

Despite this, in January eurozone employers have continued to take on staff at the same rate as in December, which registered a four-and-a-half-year recruitment high.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit said: 'The cooling in the pace of growth in euro area business activity at the start of 2016 is a disappointment but not surprising given the uncertainty caused by the financial market volatility seen so far this year.

'It would be wrong to get too worried … Firms also appear to be looking to brighter times ahead, with business confidence improving, linked in turn to backlogs of work rising at the fastest rate since the spring of 2011. With plenty of orders-in-hand to work through, hiring remained encouragingly resilient at the start of the year.'

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World growth worries but UK growing steadily

The world growth forecast has been cut by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which cites the slowdown in the Chinese economy and the drop in commodity prices as reasons to be pessimistic, given that many developing economies of nations such as Brazil rely heavily on commodity exports to China and elsewhere to keep growing.

Commodities include oil, agricultural cash crops and such goods as mined minerals or metals.

The IMF is predicting that the global economy will grow by 3.4% in 2016, which is 0.2% lower than was forecast in October, and then by 3.6% in 2017.

The forecast is of 2.2% for UK growth for both this year and next, with only the UK, the United States and Spain predicted to achieve growth above 2% of all the developed economies.