UK Preliminary Services PMI drops to 53.3 in July vs. 53.0 expected

• UK Manufacturing PMI eases to 52.2 in July, beats estimates.
• Services PMI in the UK comes in at 53.3 in July, better than forecasts. 
• GBP/USD keeps the rebound intact at around 1.2050 on upbeat UK PMIs.

The seasonally adjusted S&P Global/CIPS UK Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) dropped to 52.2 in July versus 52.0 expected and 52.8 – June’s final reading.

Meanwhile, the Preliminary UK Services Business Activity Index for July arrived at 53.3 when compared to June’s final score of 54.3 and 53.0 expected.

Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global, commented on the survey

“UK economic growth slowed to a crawl in July, registering the slowest expansion since the lockdowns of early-2021. Although not yet in decline, with pent-up demand for vehicles and consumer-oriented services such as travel and tourism helping to sustain growth in July, the PMI is now at a level consistent with just 0.2% GDP growth.“

“Forward-looking indicators suggest worse is to come. Manufacturing order books are now deteriorating for the first time in one and a half years as inflows of new work are insufficient to keep workforces busy, which is usually a precursor to output and jobs being cut in coming months."

FX implications

Better than forecast UK business PMIs enable the GBP/USD pair to maintain its rebound near 1.1950. The pair is losing 0.36% on the day.