The IMF (International Monetary Fund) will deliver its decision in the economy of the United Kingdom later, after it said in November that it was "on the mend". Since that announcement, the country's economy contracted by 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010 and subsequently grew by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2011.

On Sunday, the government was asked by a group of academics to come up with a new plan on economic policy, but Chancellor George Osborne responded by saying that the fiscal plan of the UK was "credible".

"The economy is growing, jobs are being created", said Chancellor Osborne in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today program. "We would like the economy to grow further and we would like more jobs to be created".

However, the group of academics seems to disagree. They said in a letter to the Observer that the debt-reduction plan was counter-productive. They described how the spending cuts were negatively hitting the potential growth of the economy.

The economics editor of BBC, Stephanie Flanders, said that even though there were still people in support of Chancellor Osborne, most of them would be willing to admit that the economy had not turned out the way they expected it.