Britain to trumpet economic recovery

British finance minister George Osborne will later Friday hail the nation's economic recovery, one year after the International Monetary Fund had warned that his austerity policies were "playing with fire".

Osborne will defend his economic policies in a key speech in Washington, where he is attending the annual World Bank/IMF spring meetings.

"Our economy has grown faster than any other in the G7 over the last year and is now forecast by the IMF to do the same in 2014," he will tell the American Enterprise Institute, according to advance extracts from his speech.

"All of this demonstrates that fiscal consolidation and economic recovery go together."

"Instead of more debt or more government spending, we need to get our public finances in order, make structural reforms and compete in the world again."

In April last year, IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard had warned that Osborne's austerity measures were "playing with fire", and urged for him to ease the pace of fiscal consolidation.

However this week, the IMF forecast that Britain was on course to outshine the world's top advanced economies this year.

The nation's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow by 2.9 percent this year, the IMF predicted.

That puts Britain ahead of the United States, Germany and Canada, and marked an upgrade from the previous IMF growth estimate of 2.4 percent.

The nation's economy expanded by 1.7 percent last year, which was the strongest growth since before the global financial crisis.

Britain's fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, forecasts that British gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by 2.7 percent in 2014. -- AFP