The trade deficit of U. K expanded during the year as the imports witnessed a remarkable increase whereas the exports remained almost the same.

According to the Office for National Statistics, since January 2009, the goods-trade gap was reported to be 7.3 billion pounds. Imports rose by 5.2 %, while exports climbed to 4.5 %.

"So far, progress on the economy rebalancing trade towards exports has been disappointingly sluggish, but I would hope to see improvement of that during 2010", said Howard Archer, an Economist at IHS Global Insight.

The trade gap with the nations outside the European Union swelled to 3.6 billion pounds from 3.1 billion pounds in November as the imports rose by 7.6 %.

Car imports jumped 16 percent in December from the previous month, outweighing a 10 percent increase in auto exports, the statistics office said. The government has offered incentives for people to trade in their cars to support the industry.

"One of the problems why the trade balance has been not as good as expected recently is because the import of cars has been lifted by the government's scrappage scheme. But it should just be a temporary factor. You would hope that would die down and exports would continue to benefit from improving overseas demand and the weak pound", said Archer.