Shoppers walk on Regent Street in London, Britain, May 15, 2025. REUTERS/Maja Smiejkowska/ File Photo

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain's economy at the end of 2023 is now estimated to have been 2.2% bigger than its peak immediately before the coronavirus pandemic, up slightly from a previous estimate of 1.9%, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday.

The ONS said the revision followed a regular update to the way it calculates gross domestic product including improved research and development data and changes to its measurement of the activity of large multinational companies.

"This work has had the effect of boosting pharmaceuticals and the manufacturing sector as their directly owned production abroad now counts towards UK GDP," Craig McLaren, head of national accounts at the ONS, said in a blog.

"Overall, there is little impact on growth from all these improvements, with average annual growth over the period 1998 to 2023 remaining at 1.8% and average quarterly growth remaining at 0.5%," McLaren said.

Britain's post-pandemic recovery has lagged behind that of many other economies, something Prime Minister Keir Starmer and finance minister Rachel Reeves have promised voters they will change following last year's national election.

At the end of June this year, British GDP was 4.5% higher than at the end of December 2019 compared with 6.0% growth in the euro zone and almost 13% in the U.S, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

However, Germany's economy was only 0.3% bigger than before the pandemic.

(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Kate Holton and James Davey)