UK economy will overtake France’s, claims report
BRITAIN will overtake arch-rival France to become the world's fifth biggest economy in 2016, a think-tank will reveal this week.
And we may even leapfrog our cross-Channel cousins by the end of NEXT YEAR if the Euro crisis gets even worse.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) claims France has gone "ex-growth" and its output will shrink by 0.6 per cent in 2012.
Britain, meanwhile, will benefit from George Osborne's cuts — and staying outside of the Euro. France's downfall will be even more staggering if the single currency collapses.
CEBR chief Douglas McWilliams told The Sun: "Britain's GDP (economic output) will overtake France's GDP, it's just a question of when.
"If the Euro doesn't blow up this will happen in 2016, but in a worse-case 'Euro bust' scenario France will fall back dramatically. In this case, France gets overtaken not only by the UK, but also by Brazil by 2015, by Russia in 2016 and by India in 2017."
The CEBR's forecasts come just days after the French crowed that Britain's AAA debt rating should be slashed.
France's top banker Christian Noyer last week blasted that Britain has "a bigger deficit, as much debt, more inflation and weaker growth".
Instead, a credit rating agency warned French premier Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday night that Paris was far more likely to suffer a downgrade.
The CEBR said France was losing its competitiveness on the international stage. Its export market share has fallen a quarter since it signed up to the Euro.
Mr McWilliams added that the French faced years of austerity and its banks may need to raise billions of euros to withstand the chaos in Greece. He added: "The French are doing similar things to Osborne. But the difference is our government is doing it out of conviction rather than being forced to. It's surprising that they want to be so critical of the UK when the economic fundamentals look so bad for them."
The scale of the crisis in Europe was shown by a grim message from Spain's new PM Mariano Rajoy yesterday.
He vowed to slash £14billion from spending and revealed that youth unemployment was now a staggering 46 PER CENT. He said: "The panorama could not be more sombre."
BRITAIN will overtake arch-rival France to become the world's fifth biggest economy in 2016, a think-tank will reveal this week.
And we may even leapfrog our cross-Channel cousins by the end of NEXT YEAR if the Euro crisis gets even worse.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) claims France has gone "ex-growth" and its output will shrink by 0.6 per cent in 2012.
Britain, meanwhile, will benefit from George Osborne's cuts — and staying outside of the Euro. France's downfall will be even more staggering if the single currency collapses.
CEBR chief Douglas McWilliams told The Sun: "Britain's GDP (economic output) will overtake France's GDP, it's just a question of when.
"If the Euro doesn't blow up this will happen in 2016, but in a worse-case 'Euro bust' scenario France will fall back dramatically. In this case, France gets overtaken not only by the UK, but also by Brazil by 2015, by Russia in 2016 and by India in 2017."
The CEBR's forecasts come just days after the French crowed that Britain's AAA debt rating should be slashed.
France's top banker Christian Noyer last week blasted that Britain has "a bigger deficit, as much debt, more inflation and weaker growth".
Instead, a credit rating agency warned French premier Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday night that Paris was far more likely to suffer a downgrade.
The CEBR said France was losing its competitiveness on the international stage. Its export market share has fallen a quarter since it signed up to the Euro.
Mr McWilliams added that the French faced years of austerity and its banks may need to raise billions of euros to withstand the chaos in Greece. He added: "The French are doing similar things to Osborne. But the difference is our government is doing it out of conviction rather than being forced to. It's surprising that they want to be so critical of the UK when the economic fundamentals look so bad for them."
The scale of the crisis in Europe was shown by a grim message from Spain's new PM Mariano Rajoy yesterday.
He vowed to slash £14billion from spending and revealed that youth unemployment was now a staggering 46 PER CENT. He said: "The panorama could not be more sombre."
