ZURICH, Oct 1 - Bank of England Chief Economist Charles Bean said on Wednesday he was not surprised by Tuesday's sharp upward revision to second quarter growth numbers for the British economy. "It is not surprising to us that there have been some revisions. These don't worry the committee," he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Zurich at which he was due to speak, referring to the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee.
The Office for National Statistics on Tuesday revised its estimate of second quarter gross domestic product growth to 0.6 percent from an original 0.3 percent, citing new, much stronger figures on construction output supplied to it by the Department of Trade and Industry. "In the minutes last month we made it clear we had puzzles with the official data. The weakness of output growth didn't fit with the apparent strength of domestic demand," he said. "Since we already had those strong construction numbers, the revision to output is not a surprise. We expected something like this. The revision to the demand side actually make the whole picture fit together much better." He said the MPC would discuss the implications of the changes at its monthly rate meeting next week.//