United Kingdom: Selected Issues
IMF Staff Country Reports, July 16, 2026
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Bibliographic details
- Published: July 16, 2026
- Series: IMF Staff Country Reports
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798229052153.002
Overview
- Focus: unlocking AI-led productivity growth in the United Kingdom.
- Context: AI presents a significant opportunity to address the United Kingdom’s persistent productivity slowdown.
- Comparative advantage: strong specialization in high-skill, knowledge-intensive service sectors where AI adoption offers the greatest potential gains.
- Enabling conditions identified as critical: digital infrastructure, innovation financing, regulatory clarity, workforce skills, and trade openness.
- Complementarities: the government’s broader growth strategy emphasizes reforms to planning, energy markets, and scale-up financing; these should be complemented by targeted AI-specific policies addressing regulatory uncertainty, skills shortages, and supply-chain resilience.
Model-based findings and scenarios
- Calibrated model result: halving regulatory constraints and expanding the supply of AI-related skills could increase AI-driven output gains by approximately two-thirds relative to the baseline.
- Strategic exposure: dependence on foreign AI models exposes the economy to potentially significant output losses from external disruptions.
- Implication from scenarios: investing in a robust domestic AI ecosystem mitigates risks from external disruptions and supports innovation capacity.
Policy recommendations
- Strengthen enabling conditions:
- Digital infrastructure.
- Innovation financing.
- Regulatory clarity.
- Workforce skills.
- Trade openness.
- Complement broader reforms (planning, energy markets, scale-up financing) with AI-specific measures:
- Reduce regulatory uncertainty that constrains AI adoption.
- Expand the supply of AI-related skills to the workforce.
- Enhance supply-chain resilience for AI inputs and model dependencies.
- Strategic investment:
- Build domestic technological resilience and innovation capacity to reduce exposure to foreign-model disruptions.
Key statistics and identifiers
- Pages: 93
- Volume: 2026
- Issue: 173
- Series: Country Report No. 2026/173
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798229052153.002
- Stock No: 1GBREA2026002
- ISBN: 9798229052153
- ISSN: 1934-7685
United Kingdom: Selected Issues
Content in this bundle
- United Kingdom: Selected Issues; IMF Country Report No. 26/173; June 24, 2026