Falling household wealth another downside risk

Although GDP growth this year was the fastest in three years, the pick-up was partly due to a bounce back from the earlier oil price shock. Unfortunately, the bigger issue now is that declining house prices are eroding household wealth, which will have a knock-on impact on housing investment and consumption. Even after allowing for some improvement in exports and business investment, we expect GDP growth to slow from 2.9% in 2017 to 1.5% in 2018.