Business investment receives an encouraging provisional number
UK business investment rose by a provisional 5.9% in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics, causing several economists to look briefly less haunted.
The estimate also placed investment 8.1% above the same quarter a year earlier. These figures cover non-financial assets, meaning useful objects that cannot be converted into a motivational podcast by lunchtime.
The largest underlying survey had a response rate of 64.7%. The remaining businesses were presumably too busy investing, not investing or trying to remember which spreadsheet contained the forklift.
“A provisional figure is a number wearing a visitor badge,” explained Crispin Ledger, Principal Economist for Movable Decimals. “Please admire it, but do not let it sign a long lease.”
The release included a £1.6 billion bias adjustment because large capital spending often arrives later. This is statistics admitting that expensive machinery enters the data with the same punctuality as a tradesman carrying one mysterious length of pipe.
At the Bureau of Quarterly Optimism, analysts placed the 5.9% rise beneath flattering lighting and asked everyone not to mention revisions until the canapé trays were empty.
Businesses, meanwhile, continued buying equipment and buildings without realising each purchase would eventually become a line in a table discussed by people who say quarter-on-quarter at parties.
Read the real story: the ONS provisional business investment figures.
