The British currency jumped on Wednesday after official data showed that the nation's industrial output beat analysts' expectations as well as the results from peer Germany and Spain.
Britain’s factories posted a 1.0% rise in industrial output in August, said the Office for National Statistics. That’s much stronger than the 0.3% rise which economists had expected. It was mainly driven by stronger oil and gas production, and a pick-up in car production after shutdowns in July.
UK manufacturing output (a more narrow measure) climbed by 0.5% during the month, but was still 0.8% lower than a year ago after some tough months.
GBP/USD was trading at 1.5314 from around 1.5290 ahead of the announcement, while EUR/GBP was at 0.7352, down 0.68%.
Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight commented that:
"August’s rebound in industrial production means that the sector may have managed to eke out marginal growth in the third quarter rather than contracting as had previously looked likely. Even so, industrial production was still only up 0.1% in the three months to August compared to the three months to May."
