THE current coronavirus lockdown measures are costing the UK economy a staggering £2.4billion a day, according to an alarming new report.
Economic modelling by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) found the economic shutdown is leading to a fall in economic output of 31 per cent.
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It analysed the value of goods and services that are not currently being produced in each sector — finding that manufacturing, hospitality and construction sectors are losing the most.
The fall in output from the manufacturing sector is estimated to be costing the economy over £500million per day — a fifth of the total hit to the economy.
Production in the sector is down 69 per cent.
This is because workers producing goods and services that are not deemed to be essential cannot do so remotely and because export demand and sometimes domestic demand have fallen sharply.
The lack of production in the accommodation and food services sector is costing the economy £172million per day — down 79 per cent on pre-crisis levels.
The drop in output in the construction industry is worth £274million a day.
Non-food retail is losing £156 million per day.
The combined loss of output in all sectors is £2.4billion per day, laying bare the scale of the economic hit caused by the lockdown measures imposed to suppress the spread of coronavirus.
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PROPOSED MEASURES
CEBR founder Douglas McWilliams said: “These results show that the manufacturing sector, as well as the more obvious sectors such as retail and leisure, is one of the more badly hit by the virus and economic slowdown.
“Many of the government measures do little to help capital intensive sectors like manufacturing, which benefits relatively less from furloughing employees and is essentially excluded from rate relief.
“It is likely therefore that Chancellor Rishi Sunak will need to look again at how to help this sector to prevent fundamentally viable firms from going under.”
It came as Labour’s new leader Sir Keir Starmer called for taxes on the rich and wealthy to be hiked to pay for the coronavirus crisis.
He warned wealthy individuals and businesses will face a “reckoning” when the pandemic is over.
He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday: “I think it’s inevitable that we have to ask people who have more to pay more.
“The truth is at the moment, we don’t yet know how big this challenge is going to be until we are through this crisis.
“When we are through, there is going to have to be a reckoning.
“We are going to have to do things differently, we are going to have to build a better future.”
His comments were echoed calls by Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker, who said we should not just be asking footballers to take a hit.
He told the same programme yesterday: “Nobody seems to talk about the bankers, the CEOs, huge billionaires everywhere. Are they standing up, are they being asked to stand up? We don’t know.”
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