Regional gross domestic product: January to March 2019

These are experimental statistics and the volatility of the quarterly data make interpreting short term changes difficult. This is the second edition of these experimental statistics.

Main points

Change over the shorter term

• GDP in Wales decreased by 0.5% in quarter 1 (January to March) 2019 compared with the previous quarter (October to December 2018). For the UK as a whole there was an increase of 0.6%.
• Wales had the largest decrease in output of the twelve countries and regions of the UK in quarter 1 2019.
• The production sector saw an increase of 1.0% but both the service and construction sectors saw a decrease of 0.8% and 1.6%, respectively.

Change over the longer term

• Wales saw GDP growth of 2.6% compared to the same quarter a year ago, the UK as a whole saw GDP growth of 2.2%.
• There was strong growth in the construction sector (11.5%), an increase of 2.7% in services and a fall of 0.6% in the production sector.