The EU has decreed that, in order to ensure that statistics from EU countries are fully comparable, the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) will have to start to include illegal activities in GDP calculations as from September.
This is expected to add approximately £10BN to the UK economy.
Initially the UK will only include UK production of cannabis,
drug smuggling and prostitution. However, in due course illegal
employment, gambling, pirating of software and fencing of stolen goods
will also have to be included.
Quite how the ONS will derive "reliable" figures for these activities remains to be seen!
No comments:
Post a Comment