Bad news for big economies as UK, Japan slide into recession

Two major world economies — Japan and the UK — have fallen into a recession in the second half of 2023. While Japan’s ‘unexpected fall comes off the back of a contracting gross domestic product (GDP) — its economy also shrank by 3.3pc in the previous quarter, the UK’s decline comes ahead of this year’s expected election for PM Rishi Sunak, who has promised to boost growth. The figures from Japan’s Cabinet Office also indicate that the country has lost its position as the world’s third-largest economy to Germany, BBC News reported. Economists had expected the new data to show that Japan’s GDP grew by more than 1pc in the fourth quarter of last year.