- The growth rate of nominal spending on consumer goods and services remained sluggish.
- Difficulties obtaining mortgages, concerns about future incomes, and uncertainty about the path of house prices continued to weigh on activity in the housing market.
- Investment intentions indicated that capital spending was likely to continue to grow at a reasonably steady pace over the coming year.
- The growth rate of goods exports remained robust, due to rising world demand and the competitive level of sterling.
- Manufacturing output continued to expand at a steady pace.
- The recovery in the business service sector remained fairly modest, with slowing government spending offsetting much of the growth in business-to-business demand.
- The level of construction output was thought to have picked up slightly compared to a year earlier, but declining public sector orders were expected to weigh on the growth rate of activity going forward.
- Employment intentions indicated that there would be further job creation over the coming six months.
- There was still some spare capacity in the service sector, but most manufacturing businesses were operating at broadly normal levels of capacity utilisation.
- The growth rate of labour costs remained modest, with settlements reflecting a degree of compensation for past wage restraint, and some recognition for the rising cost of living.
- There had been rapid inflation in the prices of various raw materials, but contacts thought that there had not been a further acceleration in the pace of increase.
- Inflation in the price of raw materials had contributed to higher prices of imported finished goods, along with higher wages in some emerging markets and rising transport costs.
- There had been some pass-through of higher input costs to domestic output prices.
- The rate of inflation of consumer goods and services prices remained high.
Agents' summary of business conditions - June 2011