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ABU DHABI  — In the vast air-conditioned halls of an Abu Dhabi conference centre, the world's much-vaunted transition to clean energy is the buzzword in sessions of a top industry gathering.

But many executives and officials from oil-dependent Gulf states insist that while the change to renewables is essential, fossil fuels remain the future at least for the next few decades, despite the urgent need to fight climate change.

The debate has taken centre stage at this week's World Energy Congress, with many officials calling for accelerating the process of moving to clean power sources and minimising carbon emissions.

Speakers addressed issues like the role of nuclear, hydrogen gas and other non-conventional sources of energy as a replacement for fossil fuels which currently account for over three quarters of the world's energy consumption.

However, delegates from oil-producing countries and particularly those in the Gulf argued that although the transition to clean energy sources must be supported, they will not be able to meet rising demand any time soon.

"For decades to come the world will still rely on oil and gas as the majority source of energy," said the head of Abu Dhabi Oil Co. Jaber Sultan.

"About $11 trillion of investment in oil and gas is needed to keep up with current projected demand," over the next two decades, he told the congress which was attended by representatives of 150 nations and over 400 CEOs.

Energy from increasingly competitive renewable sources has quadrupled globally in just a decade, but insatiable demand for energy particularly from developing economies saw power sector emissions rise 10 per cent, a UN report said last week. 

"All energy transitions — including this one — take decades, with many challenges along the road," the CEO of Saudi energy giant Aramco, Amin Nasser, said at the conference.

Nasser said his country supports the growing contribution of alternatives, but criticised policies adopted by many governments that do not consider "the long-term nature of our business and the need for orderly transition".

Addicted to oil 

Oil is still the lifeline for the Gulf states, contributing at least 70 per cent of national revenues across the region which has been cushioned by decades of immense profits from the flow of "black gold".

Gulf nations have invested tens of billions of dollars in clean energy projects, mainly in solar and nuclear.

Dubai has launched the world's largest solar energy project, with a price tag of $13.6 billion and the capacity to satisfy a quarter of the energy-hungry emirate's current needs when it comes on line in 2030.

But critics say the addiction to oil is a tough one to kick, particularly when supplies remain abundant and the massive investment in infrastructure necessary to switch to renewables is daunting.

"A global shift from dirty fossil fuel to renewable energy is economically, technically and technologically feasible... All that is missing is political will!" said Julien Jreissati from Greenpeace in the Middle East.

He said while the United Arab Emirates has put plans into action, "Saudi Arabia which has always made big announcements regarding their renewable energy ambitions is lagging behind as their projects and targets remain ink on paper.”

"There is no doubt that the world will leave oil behind. The only question remaining is when will this happen?"

Despite important technological advances made in the past decade, renewable energy sources still make up just around 18 per cent and nuclear adds another 6 per cent of the world's energy mix. 

In the past decade, the adoption of wind and solar energy picked up rapidly as the production cost plummeted to levels close to that of oil and gas.

But the Abu Dhabi conference saw calls for accelerated innovation and "disruptive" technology to speed the transition as the world prepares for global energy demand to peak between 2020 and 2025, according to the World Energy Council.

Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid said that sustainable and environmentally friendly energy practices must be aligned with national and global economic policies in order to have the required impact.

"It makes more economic sense to apply all green technologies globally, and if this happens we might go to being CO2-free energy users 5 or 10 or 20 years quicker," she told the conference.

"I prefer that market forces, pushed by smart policymaking and legal space-setting, act quickly and save us all from the alternative."

ABU DHABI — Saudi Arabia’ energy company Aramco is ready for a two-stage stock market debut including an international listing "very soon" but the timing is up to the government, its CEO said on Tuesday.

Aramco has said it plans to float around 5 per cent of the state-owned company in 2020 or 2021 in what could potentially be the world's biggest stock sale.

The mammoth Initial Public Offering (IPO) forms the cornerstone of a reform programme envisaged by the kingdom's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to wean the Saudi economy off its reliance on oil.

It aims to raise up to $100 billion based on a $2 trillion valuation of the company, but investors have debated whether Aramco is worth that much and there have been repeated delays in the launch originally envisaged for 2018.

"We have always said is that Aramco is ready for listing whenever the shareholders make a decision to list," Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told reporters on the sidelines of the World Energy Congress. 

"And as you hear from His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz yesterday, it is going to be very soon. So we are ready — that is the bottom line," he said, referring to the newly appointed energy minister.

With the low oil price believed to be a factor weighing on their decision-making, he added however that the actual date would be a "government decision".

The government has not given any explanation for the delays, but apart from holding out for the big-ticket valuation they are also said to be concerned the IPO could bring intense legal scrutiny of the secretive company's finances and corporate inner workings.

Tokyo option 

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Aramco was considering a two-stage process with a domestic debut and a subsequent international listing — possibly in Tokyo. 

"One of the primary listings is going to be local but we are also ready for listing outside," Nasser confirmed.

A Tokyo listing would be a setback for London, New York and Hong Kong, which have all vied for a slice of the business. 

Political uncertainty in Britain over its plan to exit the European Union and mass protests in Hong Kong have diminished their prospects, the Journal cited Saudi officials as saying.

Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman was promoted on Sunday to the pivotal role of energy minister, replacing veteran official Khalid Al Falih, as the top crude exporter accelerates preparations for the much-anticipated IPO.

The appointment of Prince Abdulaziz, one of the sons of Saudi Arabia's King Salman, marks the first time a royal family member has been put in charge of the all-important ministry.

In his first comments since taking up the role, the minister on Monday endorsed oil supply cuts, saying in Abu Dhabi that they would benefit all producing nations amid an oversupplied market and sagging prices. 

Crude prices are currently moving around levels of $60 a barrel, compared with more than $75 a year ago, but were given a boost on Monday by the comments.

 Prices in decline 

The OPEC petroleum exporters' cartel and key independent producers are deliberating how to halt a slide in prices that has persisted despite previous cuts and US sanctions that have squeezed supply from Iran and Venezuela.

Abu Dhabi is also hosting this week a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee of the OPEC+ alliance for a supply cut deal reached last year.

The ministers will consider fresh reductions, even though analysts are doubtful such a move would succeed in bolstering crude prices which have been badly dented by the US-China trade war.

The Aramco listing is key to Saudi's economic future. Its GDP grew by 2.4 per cent last year but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said growth would fall to 1.9 per cent in 2019 due to substantial oil output cuts.

The IMF said that fiscal reforms, including a consumption tax and higher energy prices, have started to yield results but that more is needed to plug a chronic budget deficit.

The prospect of falling short of the $2 trillion valuation desired by Saudi rulers is widely considered the reason the IPO — previously scheduled for 2018 — has been delayed.

Earlier this month, Aramco said its first half net income for 2019 slipped nearly 12 per cent to $46.9 billion on lower crude prices.

It was the first time the company has published half-year financial results and comes after Aramco opened its secretive accounts for the first time in April, revealing itself to be the world's most profitable company.

FRANKFURT AM MAIN — The European Central Bank (ECB) is widely expected on Thursday to lower negative interest rates even further, and possibly bring back its multi-billion-euro quantitative easing programme.

Here are the monetary policy tools the Frankfurt institution has hinted at deploying in the coming months to battle the uncertainty — over trade tensions, Brexit, geopolitical clashes and emerging market woes — weighing on progress towards its price stability goal.

Interest rates 

The ECB has sunk interest rates to historic lows since the twin shocks of the global financial and eurozone crises, as it pursues its mandated target of inflation of just below 2 per cent.

While deciding in July to hold the rate it charges on banks' deposits at the present -0.4 per cent, officials said it could dive to "lower levels".

Such a move should encourage lenders to issue more credit and invest in the real economy rather than hoarding cash.

Meanwhile, the ECB is less likely to shift its main refinancing rate — the interest it charges on one-week loans to banks — from its present zero per cent level.

'Tiering' 

With an eye on complaints from banks that the negative rates were hurting their business model, ECB chief Mario Draghi promised six weeks ago that "if we are to lower interest rates, that will come with mitigating measures".

Among such action could be a "tiering" system to exempt some deposits from the harshest negative rate.

Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and Japan have already adopted such a measure, slashing lenders' annual bill on excess liquidity, which for eurozone banks currently amounts to around 7.5 billion euros ($8.4 billion) — mostly paid by French and German lenders.

Cheap loans to banks 

In March, Draghi said the bank would offer a third series of cheap two-year loans between September 2019 and March 2021.

The institution gave banks the chance to borrow massive amounts at extremely favourable interest rates in schemes known as TLTRO I and II between 2014 and 2016.

The measure was another attempt to encourage lending to the sluggish real economy.

Banks, especially the more fragile members of the sector in Italy, leapt at the chance for low-cost liquidity.

ECB policymakers decided in June that, depending on how much the banks lend to the real economy, they could — as in previous rounds — even enjoy a negative interest rate as low as -0.3 per cent on their borrowings.

That would mean the central bank effectively paying them to borrow money.

Mass bond-buying 

When lower interest rates alone failed to restore growth and inflation, the ECB turned to a policy of mass purchases of government and corporate bonds, known as "quantitative easing" or QE.

Between March 2015 and December 2018, policymakers bought up 2.6 trillion euros of debt, mostly at a pace of tens of billions per month.

The aim: To flush newly-created money through the financial system and into the real economy to stimulate growth.

Central bankers credit the scheme with helping ward off deflation and create millions of jobs.

In July, the ECB signalled it could once again employ that tool, saying it has tasked officials to examine "options for the size and composition of potential new net asset purchases".

A possible relaunch of QE "remains the natural policy response in the absence of a sustained rebound in inflation expectations", Pictet Wealth Management Strategist Frederik Ducrozet said.

But a new round of bond-buying could require the ECB to relax a 33 per cent limit on the share of any one country's debt it can buy.

That, in turn, could bring new legal and political challenges down on its head, risking a repeat appearance before Germany's constitutional court over allegations of "monetary financing" — or the central bank directly footing the bill for state spending — which is banned under European treaties.

ABU DHABI — Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman, said on Monday that oil production cuts would benefit all exporting nations, in an indication he will support further reductions to address an oversupplied market and sagging prices.

In his first comments since being appointed by his father King Salman on Sunday, the minister signalled no major change in approach in Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) which pumps about a third of the cartel’s oil.

“The pillars of our oil policy are pre-determined and will not change,” he told Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya.

The prince was in Abu Dhabi to attend the World Energy Congress, followed by a meeting on Thursday of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of the OPEC+ alliance for a supply cut deal reached last year.

The ministers will consider fresh reductions although analysts are doubtful that such a move would succeed in bolstering crude prices which have been badly dented by the US-China trade war.

Crude prices are currently moving around levels of $60 a barrel, in contrast with more than $75 this time last year but up from around $50 at the end of December 2018.

Prince Abdulaziz said that the trade war, which has triggered fears of a global recession, has cast a “fog” over the oil market.

However, he appeared to swing his support behind further curbs to rebalance the crude market.

“Cutting output will benefit all members of OPEC,” he told Al Arabiya on the sidelines of the conference.

The appointment of Prince Abdulaziz, half-brother to de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, marks the first time a royal family member has been put in charge of the all-important energy ministry.

He replaces veteran official Khalid Al Falih as the world’s top crude exporter accelerates preparations for a much-anticipated stock listing of state-owned oil giant Aramco, expected to be the world’s biggest.

“Prince Abdulaziz is very experienced and has served in the energy industry for decades,” Giovanni Staunovo, an analyst at UBS Group AG in Zurich, told Bloomberg News.

“His comments today suggest we shouldn’t expect any major policy changes from the kingdom, which still wants to see oil inventories falling.”

Stubborn slide 

The OPEC petroleum exporters’ cartel and key independent producers want to halt a slide in prices that has persisted despite previous output cuts and US sanctions that have squeezed supply from Iran and Venezuela.

Analysts say the JMMC monitoring body has limited options when it meets in Abu Dhabi.

UAE Energy Minister Suheil Al Mazrouei said on Sunday the group would do “whatever necessary” to rebalance the crude market, but admitted that the issue was not entirely in the hands of the world’s top producers.

The market is no longer governed by supply and demand but is being influenced more by US-China trade tensions and geopolitical factors, he said. 

Analysts say that while cuts could help prices, they could also mean producers lose further market share.

Prince Abdulaziz also alluded to the sense that Saudi Arabia is shouldering the burden of production cuts, while other nations — notably Nigeria and Iraq — are flouting the limitations.

Speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi, he said the pledges made so far were good, but that one or two countries “need to be more committed” in order to bring benefits to the entire industry.

The 25-nation OPEC+ group, dominated by the cartel’s kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC production giant Russia, agreed to reduce output in December 2018.

That came as a faltering global economy and a boom in US shale oil threatened to create a global glut in supply.

Previous supply cuts have mostly succeeded in bolstering prices. 

 But this time, the market has continued to slide — even after OPEC+ agreed in June to extend by nine months an earlier deal slashing output by 1.2 million barrels per day.

The new factor is the trade dispute between the US and China, whose tit-for-tat tariffs have created fears of a global recession that will undermine demand for oil.

DUBAI — Top oil producers will consider fresh output cuts at a meeting this week, but analysts are doubtful they will succeed in bolstering crude prices dented by the US-China trade war.

The OPEC petroleum exporters’ cartel and key non-OPEC members want to halt a slide in prices that has continued despite previous production cuts and US sanctions that have squeezed supply from Iran and Venezuela.

Analysts say the OPEC+ group’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, which monitors a supply cut deal reached last year, has limited options when it meets in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

UAE Energy Minister Suheil Al Mazrouei said on Sunday the group would do “whatever necessary” to rebalance the crude market, but admitted that the issue was not entirely in the hands of the world’s top producers.

Speaking at a press conference in Abu Dhabi ahead of the World Energy Congress, to start on Monday, he said the oil market is no longer governed by supply and demand but is being influenced more by US-China trade tensions and geopolitical factors. 

The minister said that although further cuts will be considered at Thursday’s meeting, they may not be the best way to boost declining prices.

“Anything that the group sees that will balance the market, we are committed to discuss it and hopefully go and do whatever necessary,” he said.

“But I wouldn’t suggest to jump to cuts every time that we have an issue on trade tensions.”

While cuts could help prices, they could also mean producers lose further market share, analysts say.

“OPEC has traditionally resorted to production cuts in order to shore up the prices,” said M. R. Raghu, head of research at Kuwait Financial Centre (Markaz). 

“However, this has come at the cost of reduction in OPEC’s global crude market share from a peak of 35 per cent in 2012 to 30 per cent as of July 2019,” he told AFP.

The 24-nation OPEC+ group, dominated by the cartel’s kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC production giant Russia, agreed to reduce output in December 2018.

That came as a faltering global economy and a boom in US shale oil threatened to create a global glut in supply.

Previous supply cuts have mostly succeeded in bolstering prices. 

But this time, the market has continued to slide — even after OPEC+ agreed in June to extend by nine months an earlier deal slashing output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd).

Trade war 

The new factor is the trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies, whose tit-for-tat tariffs have created fears of a global recession that will undermine demand for oil. 

Saudi economist Fadhl Al Bouenain said the oil market has become “highly sensitive to the US-China trade war”.

“What is happening to oil prices is outside the control of OPEC and certainly stronger than its capability,” Bouenain told AFP.

“Accordingly, I think OPEC+ will not resort to new production cuts” because that would further blunt the group’s already shrunken market share, he said.

European benchmark Brent was selling at $61.54 per barrel on Friday, in contrast with more than $75 this time last year but up from around $50 at the end of December 2018. 

The deliberations also coincide with stymied production from Iran and Venezuela and slower growth in US output, meaning that supplies are not excessively high.

“US shale output growth does not have the same momentum as in previous cycles, and OPEC production is at a 15-year low, having fallen by 2.7 million barrels per day over the past nine months,” Standard Chartered said in a commentary last month.

“We think that the oil policy options for key producers are limited, for the moment,” the investment bank said. 

No decisions will be taken at Thursday’s meeting, but it should produce recommendations ahead of an OPEC+ ministerial meeting in Vienna in December.

Rapidan Energy Group said the alliance might need to cut output by an additional 1 million bpd to stabilise the market.

But the problem will be deciding which member countries will shoulder the burden of any new cuts.

Saudi Arabia, which is the de facto leader of OPEC and pumps about a third of the cartel’s oil, took on more than its fair share last time around.

It has also undergone a major shake-up in its oil sector, announcing the replacement of energy minister Khalid Al Falih with Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman in the early hours of Sunday morning ahead of a much-anticipated stock listing of state oil giant Aramco.

Bouenain said he believes that Riyadh is likely to resist taking on further cuts, given the impact on the kingdom’s revenues.

Raghu said that “without a favourable resolution to the dispute, OPEC’s production cuts will not result in a sizeable uptick of oil prices”.

WASHINGTON — America's jobs engine downshifted in August as employers unexpectedly held back hiring across major industries, another sign that the world's largest economy is cooling off, government data showed on Friday.

As the numbers were released early on Friday, President Donald Trump, whose record as a job creator could pale ahead of next year's election, renewed his attacks on the US central bank, which he blames for failing to stimulate the economy fast enough.

The surprisingly soft result confirmed that labor markets in 2019 have slowed from their brisk pace last year, amid a protracted trade dispute with China that has dragged down global commerce, fuelled business uncertainty and driven US manufacturing into recession.

Employers added a still-solid 130,000 net new positions for the month, far lower than analyst forecasts, while the jobless rate held steady at 3.7 per cent for the third month in a row, according to Labour Department estimates.

Figures for May and June were also cut by a total of 20,000 positions, bringing the rolling, three-month average to 156,000, well below the 241,000 seen in August last year.

The report did bring some good news, however: Wages continued to rise, suggesting consumer spending — which is almost single-handedly supporting US economic growth — will continue.

The share of the working-age population with a job rose to its highest level since the depths of the Great Recession in December 2008.

"The softening in job growth should surprise no one. But it doesn't mean the economy is headed toward a recession right away," economist Joel Naroff told clients in a note.

Economists on Friday also pointed out that August numbers are frequently revised upward in later months. 

Amid weak investment by companies and mounting fears of a recession, employers also say they are struggling to find qualified workers to fill open positions.

'Oh, well...' 

The slower jobs numbers should also support a Federal Reserve (Fed) decision later this month to cut interest rates, as markets widely expect it will do for the second time this year.

Late Thursday and early Friday, Trump took to Twitter to fire off the latest of many attacks on the US central bank, which he said had raised interest rates too quickly last year.

"They were WAY too early to raise, and Way too late to cut — and big dose quantitative tightening didn't exactly help either," said Trump, who has advance access to the jobs report before its public release.

"Where did I find this guy Jerome?" he said, referring to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he prompted to central bank chairman.

"Oh well, you can't win them all!"

Speaking on Friday at the University of Zurich, Powell said he and fellow policymakers tuned out Trump's political taunts.

But Powell welcomed the report's figures on rising wages.

"Our labour market is in quite a strong position. For a year and a half, we've been at half-century lows in unemployment," he said.

"I think today's labour market report is very much consistent with that story."

Workers got a bump in pay, as hourly wages rose 11 cents on average, putting them up more than 3 per cent, year-on-year, for the 13th month in a row.

But within the August jobs details there were other causes for concern. 

About a quarter of August hires came from the government itself as federal authorities ramped up staffing to conduct next year's census.

Private-sector employers added only 96,000 jobs in August, well below the 145,000 which economists had forecast.

In the dominant service sector, the retail, transportation and utilities industries all shed jobs for at least the second month in a row.

Work forces also shrank in the mining sector, likely suffering from a dip in oil prices.

Hiring was cut in half from July in the education and health industries and was flat for auto manufacturers and information services as well as leisure and hospitality.

Wall Street appeared unimpressed with the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up about 0.3 per cent.

BEIJING — China and the United States will resume trade talks in Washington in early October, Beijing said on Thursday, allaying fears that new punitive tariffs would lead to a breakdown in the protracted negotiations.

The world's two biggest economies have been embroiled in a tense year-long tariffs row, which escalated on September 1 when both sides swapped fresh levies on goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The talks were supposed to have resumed this month but China's commerce ministry said Vice Premier Liu He, Beijing's pointman on trade, agreed to October in a phone call with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday.

Commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said at a regular news briefing that there would be "comprehensive preparations" for the meetings by both sides and that the next round of negotiations would "strive to achieve substantive progress".

The news will be seen as a sign of optimism in a trade war that has weighed on the global economy and stock markets while also shaking diplomatic relations between the two global powers.

Equities in Asia jumped on Thursday, with Shanghai adding 1 per cent and Tokyo up more than 2 per cent.

Top officials last met in Shanghai in July for discussions that were described as "constructive" but ended with no announcements.

US President Donald Trump soon afterwards said he would increase tariffs on more than half-a-trillion dollars' worth of imports, prompting Beijing to respond with fresh tariffs on US goods worth $75 billion. Those were the levies that kicked in this month.

Tensions continued to mount over the summer, with Trump earlier this week accusing Chinese negotiators of holding out for a better deal in hopes he will be voted out in next year's presidential elections.

He has also claimed China is being forced back to the negotiating table because of the country's slowing economy.

In an editorial on Thursday, the state-run China Daily newspaper warned that the "good atmosphere" built in Shanghai had "largely evaporated as a result of the US administration flip-flopping on its promise to bring bilateral ties back on the right track".

Policy tools 

Officials in Beijing on Wednesday discussed new measures to keep the country's economy growing in the face of an "increasingly complicated and challenging external environment", according to an official statement.

Policy tools proposed at a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang include cuts to the amount of cash banks must keep in reserve to encourage more lending, especially to smaller and medium-sized businesses. An increase in the use of local government bonds to finance infrastructure projects was also put forward.

This week economists cut their forecasts for China's economic growth in 2020 to below 6 per cent as a result of increasing risks from the tariff war with the US.

But while Trump points to China's weakening economy, observers pointed out that a survey Tuesday showed the US manufacturing sector had contracted for the first time in three years.

At the recent Group of Seven meeting in France, Trump spoke of new communications between US and Chinese negotiators — giving financial markets a brief boost — though China's foreign ministry said it was unaware of such contacts.

This week Beijing said it had lodged a complaint against the US with the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the day after the new tariffs came into force.

While the US-China negotiations began in earnest in January and seemed at first to make progress, they were abruptly called off in the spring by Trump.

They resumed in June at the highest levels on the margins of the G-20 summit meeting in Osaka, Japan, when Trump met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

But in its complaint to the WTO, Beijing accused the new US tariffs of "seriously violating the consensus reached by the leaders of our two countries in Osaka".

LONDON — The pound rebounded on Wednesday, but gains were capped by investor anxiety after Brexit turmoil sent the currency tumbling and set the stage for a potential snap UK election next month.

Having dived on Tuesday to $1.1959 — the pound's weakest level since 1985 except for a 2016 "flash crash" — it has since rallied on rising hopes that Britain will not exit the European Union without a deal.

The pound shot back above $1.22 on Wednesday, an increase of 1 per cent from late Tuesday. 

"Sterling was thrown a lifeline by a parliament determined to avoid a no-deal Brexit," said analyst Connor Campbell at trading firm Spreadex, but he also injected a note of caution.

"The complicating factor here, and the reason that sterling's gains... are not even greater, is the potential for a general election."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson headed into a fresh Brexit showdown in parliament on Wednesday after being dealt a stinging defeat over his promise to get Britain out of the EU at any cost next month.

The Conservative leader has threatened to seek an early general election if lawmakers vote against him again on Wednesday and force him to seek a three-month Brexit extension from Brussels.

Many economists argue that a no-deal departure would hammer the British economy, which risks already falling into recession this quarter.

British business activity shrank in August, slammed by weakness in the key construction, manufacturing and services sectors, a key survey showed Wednesday.

The purchasing managers' index (PMI) for all UK sectors dropped to 49.7 from 50.3 in July, according to IHS Markit, which compiles the data.

A figure below 50 indicates contraction.

"The PMI surveys are so far indicating a 0.1-per cent contraction of GDP in the third quarter," which would mean Britain had fallen into recession, noted Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit.

Britain's economy unexpectedly shrank in the second quarter of the year.

The official definition of recession is two successive quarters of economic contraction.