UK no longer in recession, official figures show, as ‘confident’ Sunak insists economy has ‘real momentum’
The UK economy is no longer in recession, according to official figures.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by a better-than-expected 0.6% between January and March, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
Economists had predicted the figure would be 0.4%.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it showed the economy had “turned a corner”.
He told Sky News’s Ed Conway: “I am pleased that while there’s more work to do, today’s figures show that the economy now has real momentum, and I’m confident that with time, people will start to feel the benefits of that.
“We’ve had multiple months now where wages are rising, energy bills have fallen, mortgage rates are down and taxes are being cut… I’m pleased with the progress that we’re making.”
Mr Sunak added: “I am confident the economy is getting healthier every week.”
Pic: Jacob King/PA
A recession, which is defined as two consecutive three-month periods where the economy contracts, was declared in February.
It came after the ONS said GDP, a major measure of economic growth, shrank 0.3% between October and December. It followed a contraction of 0.1% in the three months from July to September.
The slump was blamed on reduced consumer spending power amid high inflation and energy bills. Months of wet weather also contributed to keeping shoppers at home, commentators said.
The latest figures also revealed better-than-expected growth for March. GDP was up 0.4% during the month, which was higher than the 0.1% forecast by economists.
GDP growth figures for February were also revised upwards by the ONS, from 0.1% to 0.2%.
While previous recessions have been long-lasting – such as during the global financial crash of 2008 and 2009 – the latest one had been expected to be short-lived.
Recession over with a bang – but will voters forgive government?
Britain is not just out of recession. It is out of recession with a bang.
The economic growth we saw reported this morning by the Office for National Statistics is not just faster than most economists expected, it is the fastest growth we’ve seen since the tail-end of the pandemic when the UK was bouncing back from lockdown.
But, more than that, there are three other facts that the prime minister and chancellor will be gleeful about (and you can expect them to be talking about this number for a long time).
First, it’s not just that the economy is now growing again after two-quarters of contraction (that was the recession).
An economic growth rate of 0.6% is near enough to what economists used to call “trend growth”, back before the crisis – in other words, it’s the kind of number which signifies the economy growing at more or less “normal” rates.
And normality is precisely the thing the government wants us to believe we’ve returned to.
Second, that 0.6% means the UK is, alongside Canada, the fastest-growing economy in the G7 (we’ve yet to hear from Japan, but economists expect its economy to contract in the first quarter).
Third, it’s not just gross domestic product (GDP) that’s up. So too is gross domestic product per head – the number you get when you divide our national income by every person in the country.
Economy ‘returning to full health’
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt described the figures as “encouraging” and said it showed that the economy was “returning to full health”.
He told Sky News: “I think that for families who’ve been having a really tough time, this is an indication that difficult decisions that we’ve taken over recent years are beginning to pay off and we need to stick with them.
“We’re seeing that inflation is falling faster and I think people recognise it’s been a very, very challenging period, but they don’t vote for Conservative governments for us to do popular things.
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PM: ‘UK economy has real momentum’
“They trust us to do the right thing for the long-term benefit of the economy and that is what we’ve been doing.”
However, opposition parties said there was little cause for celebration.
Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “This is no time for Conservative ministers to be doing a victory lap and telling the British people that they have never had it so good.
“The economy is still £300 smaller per person than when Rishi Sunak became prime minister.”
Sarah Olney MP, Treasury spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, added: “This Conservative government crashed the economy and sent mortgages spiralling.
“If Rishi Sunak thinks hard-hit households will be celebrating today, he is even more out of touch than we thought.”
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Liz McKeown, the ONS’s director of economic statistics, said: “There was broad-based strength across the service industries with retail, public transport and haulage, and health all performing well.
“Car manufacturers also had a good quarter. These were only a little offset by another weak quarter for construction.
“In the month of March, the economy grew robustly led, again, by services with wholesalers, the health sector and hospitality all doing well.”
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‘Path is downwards’ on interest rates
Ruth Gregory, from research firm Capital Economics, said the figures suggested the UK’s economic recovery would be stronger than previously anticipated.
She added: “All the early indicators suggest that GDP growth rose robustly in April as well.
“At the margin, this may mean the Bank of England doesn’t need to rush to cut interest rates. But the timing of the first interest rate cut will ultimately be determined by the next inflation and labour market releases.”
The latest figures come after the Bank of England held interest rates at 5.25% on Thursday and issued new forecasts for the UK economy.
The Bank projected that growth would be stronger this year, with unemployment and inflation rates lower than previously expected.
The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.
While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.
On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.
Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.
Tariffs compound existing mining challenges
Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.
Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.
According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.
Bitcoin hashprice since late 2013. Source: Bitbo
“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.
He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.
Source: Summer Meng
“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.
Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.
BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.
“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Source: jmhorp
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.
Related: Bitcoin mining using coal energy down 43% since 2011 — Report
“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.
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Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.
While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.
OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.
The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.
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Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.
A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.
In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.
CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.
CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI
The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.
CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.
In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.
CLS Global’s profile
According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”
Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.
The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.
Source: CLS Global
According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.
How much wash trading is in crypto?
Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.
According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.
Estimated wash trade volume in crypto. Source: Chainalysis
Related: Russian Gotbit founder strikes $23M plea deal with US prosecutors
Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.
In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.
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