Government borrowing down but debt still on course to reach GBP1 trillion

Thu, 21 Apr 2011

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed that the UK government borrowed nearly £5bn less than expected during the last financial year.

Latest ONS figures show that public sector net borrowing, excluding interventions such as bank bail-outs, totalled £18.6bn in March, taking the total for the 2010-11 fiscal year to £141.bn.

The annual figure is less than the £146bn that was forecast by the government-appointed spending watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), and considerably lower than the previous year’s figure of £156.5bn.

It means that the UK now owes a total of £903.4bn without including bank bailouts, which is equivalent to 59.9 per cent of UK gross domestic product (GDP). This compares to £760.3bn (52.8 per cent of GDP) at the end of March 2010.

During last month’s Budget, Chancellor George Osborne said that net borrowing was expected to fall to £122bn next year. However, borrowing at this level would still take the UK's net debt above the £1 trillion mark.
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