Bank of England (BoE) Governor Mark Carney has said that 150,000 UK businesses are not fully prepared for a no-deal Brexit scenario.
Mr Carney stated that stockpiles built up in the past year would only last weeks, while many firms simply do not have the required paperwork to continue exporting to the European Union (EU) in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The UK is currently scheduled to leave the EU on 31 October 2019 following a six-month extension of the originally intended withdrawal date of 29 March 2019.
Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, said: “Business will be reliant on what the governments are able to do in order to keep the ports open, the trade flowing.”
However, he did state that the financial system was ready in the event of no-deal.
Mr Carney said in a speech on Thursday that around 75 per cent of businesses have done as much as they can to prepare for no deal, but later added that “It doesn’t mean that they are ready for it, in fact, far from it.”
Following comments made during the Conservative leadership debate, there was a belief that the UK could secure a 10 year period of grace under the EU’s General Agreement on Tariffs (GATT 24).
Mark Carney, said: “We should be clear that not having an agreement with the European Union would mean that there are tariffs, automatically, because the Europeans have to apply the same rules to us as they apply to everyone else.”
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