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LONDON, April 10-- UK economic growth has received an unexpected boost from Brexit-fuelled stockpiling of goods. Data released Wednesday by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) showed three-monthly GDP growth up to the end of February at 0.3 percent. GDP FIGURES BETTER THAN EXPECTED While this is a lackluster performance, it exceeded the expectations of some economists and commentators, who had expected the severe uncertainty over the outcome of Brexit to heavily subdue growth or even lead to a decline in GDP. "The GDP figures are better than expected. Partly helped by December GDP monthly figure being revised up," Howard Archer, chief economic adviser at EY ITEM Club, an economics forecasting group, told Xinhua. "The underlying performance of the economy was relatively weak but off its recent lows with the GDP rate in the three months to February at 0.3 percent, compared with the preceding three months," Archer added. The effects of Brexit stockpiling boosting the manufacturing sector of the economy could be seen in the February monthly GDP figure, the freshest part of the statistics released Wednesday. "GDP growth of 0.2 percent month-on-month in February was led by manufacturing output spiking 0.9 percent month-on-month, this is a very high figure," said Archer. There were reports of pre-Brexit stockpiling of products by clients of some manufacturers, said Archer, with survey evidence from the purchasing managers suggesting that manufacturing activity benefited further into March from record stockpiling of inputs and finished products. | 
