Ah yes, the famous poverty of small economies. Ireland, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, all tragically "on par with Uzbekistan" by this metric, yet all somehow richer per head than the UK
While comparing Uzbekistan to Scotland is obviously tosh - they're all closer to NZ than any of the other countries listed.
But beyond just GDP, budget deficit is where there's a big kick to the balls - of the comparison countries all but NZ run a budget surplus (3% deficit for NZ).
While Scotland currently runs ~10% deficit and NI & Wales both run ~18% deficits.
When you compare Scottish GDP to NZ (as an example) you are comparing Apples to Magpies. The accounting is handled in a very different way for the devolved UK nations than a soverign country.
Comparing Uzbekistan to any of them doesn't really make sense. If we look at just Scotland, Uzbekistan is 6 times larger then Scotland and has around 7 times Scotland's population... Yet Scotland's GDP per capita is around 39,000 a person to Uzbekistan's measly 3,000 a person. (Scotland's GDP is higher then 200 billion btw). Even if we look at Wales or Northern Ireland in terms of GDP per capita, they still blow Uzbekistan out of the water.
In 2025 as a whole, annual onshore GDP is estimated to have been £218.8 billion in total in current prices (or nominal terms)
Have fun trying to compare which low economy country Scotland is better than and why it’s totally okay with becoming an economy the size of an African nation
Russia bots got the UK questioning its own existence
Tbf not having 9/10ths of our annual revenue taken by a foreign power has been the biggest factor. Also having our own money as well as tons of grants from the EU to invest in basic infrastructure that for some reason was not built before has been great.
Yeah it was just dumb luck and cheap corporations tax that brought all the American investment to Ireland. We as a people had no say in it, no politicians working for years through areas like foreign relations, investments in third level education. Maybe if your politicians worked at improving your country as opposed to ripping it apart we wouldn't be in this thread.
It's specifically done well since the financial crash, when it deregulated and cut corporation taxes to encourage big multi national conglomerates to set up their European bases there.
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u/AccomplishedAct5364 Sep 14 '26
Considering none of them have an economy larger than £200 billion it’ll be amazing to see how they handle being on par with… checks notes… Uzbekistan