Millions of British Gas customers have woken up to the bad news that their energy bills are going up.
It’s a big rise too! Centrica is hiking its electricity prices by 12.5% but left gas prices unchanged. This means the average dual fuel bill will rise by 7.3% to £1,120.
More than three million customer will be hit — although Centrica will provide a £76 credit to more than 200,000 vulnerable customers to protect them from the increase.
Here’s the full story:
Centrica boss Iain Conn just faced the music on Sky News, arguing that the rise is driven by “underlying increases in costs”.
Sky’s Sarah-Jane Mee isn’t impressed, though, telling Conn that she’d hoped to read out some of the comments received over social media, but they’re not suitable for a family audience.
She adds:
“Greedy” is one of the words I can read out…..
Sky News (@SkyNews)
British Gas is putting up electricity prices by 12.5% in September. @skysarahjane asked the chief exec of British Gas owner Centrica why pic.twitter.com/7JnHnhbkfG
Factory bosses reported that output and total new orders expanded at the fastest pace since February.
In another encouraging sign, new export sales rose at the second-fastest rate for nearly three years. That could bode well for global growth.
But…. Chinese manufacturers also shed jobs last month, at the fastest rate in 10 months. That meant that the backlog of unfinished work stacked up….
Dr Zhengsheng Zhong, Director of Macroeconomic Analysis at CEBM Group, says the data is encouraging:
Operating conditions in the manufacturing sector improved further in July, suggesting the economy’s growth momentum will be sustained. That said, it’s unlikely that financial regulatory tightening will be relaxed.”
The agenda: Manufacturing reports and eurozone growth
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.
Is Europe’s recovery on firm foundations? We find out today, when the first estimate of eurozone GDP for the second quarter of 2017 is released.
Economists are expecting to see solid growth, with GDP perhaps expanding by 0.6% in April to June. If so, that would broadly match America’s performance, and be twice as fast as Britain.
We also discover how the world’s factories fared in July, as data firm Markit rolls out its monthly PMI surveys. They may show that eurozone manufacturing hit a six-year high last month, and that UK growth picked up too.
European stock markets are expected to open higher, with the FTSE 100 called up 0.5%.
There’s also a blizzard of corporate news; engineering group Rolls-Royce, oil giant BP. housebuilder Taylor Wimpey and energy group Centrica are all reporting results.
And over in Threadneedle Street, staff at the Bank of England are starting a three-day strike in a pay dispute.
The agenda
9am BST: Eurozone manufacturing PMI reports for July
9.30am BST: UK manufacturing PMI for July
10am BST: Eurozone growth figures for Q2 2017 (first estimate)
