Osborne to miss deficit reduction target by at least two years, new figures suggest
Government borrowing will overshoot the chancellor's target by £8bn this financial year, according to predictions published today by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Government borrowing will overshoot the chancellor’s target by £8bn this financial year, according to predictions published today by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
On this forecast, the deficit will not be eliminated until 2018.
The deficit will come in at £117bn for this year – or 7.4 per cent of GDP – above the £109bn and 6.9 per cent predicted by the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) in December and significantly greater than the 5.8 per cent the OBR forecast in March 2012.
And lest we forget, in his first emergency budget George Osborne said:
“The formal mandate we set is that the structural current deficit should be in balance in the final year of the five-year forecast period, which is 2015-16 in this budget.”
This could ultimately mean that a Labour government is left to clear up the mess left behind by the coalition. The irony.
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