COA Solutions – Business Accounting Software

All eyes will be on the Chancellor as he delivers his budget on 24th March. His economic forecasts will be of particular interest. Although we’re now out of recession, everyone wants to know how long it will be until we can give a collective sigh of relief. Grant Thornton predicts economic growth to be around 2 ½ % for 2011 – lower than the Chancellor’s forecast of 3 ¼ to 3 ¾ % and so there is still someway to go.

Alistair Darling’s bold prediction at yesterday’s Budget that the economy will return to growth by the end of 2009, expanding by 1.25% next year and 3.5% in 2011, has generated an avalanche of criticism from opposition parties and industry leaders who have dismissed his predictions as “fantasy”.

6.30am – Awake after yet another lousy night. I keep waking up shaky and sweaty, remembering standing in the House of Commons in March last year and saying “I am able to report that the British economy will continue to grow through this year and beyond”. It’s really hard – I doze off, hear myself again and take ages to get back to sleep, and again, and again…….