{"id":3043,"date":"2010-06-18T10:03:19","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T10:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/?p=3043"},"modified":"2025-03-27T15:49:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T15:49:05","slug":"uk-obr-too-cautious-on-borrowing-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/?p=3043","title":{"rendered":"UK OBR too cautious on borrowing decline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The transfer of responsibilities to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is unlikely to result in an improvement in fiscal forecasting, which is notoriously difficult.<\/p>\n<p>The OBR this week projected a fall in public sector net borrowing excluding the temporary effects of financial interventions (PSNB ex) from &pound;156.1 billion in 2009-10 to &pound;155 billion in 2010-11. Recent trends suggest a significantly smaller deficit. May public finances numbers released today revised down the 2009-10 outturn to &pound;154.7 billion. More importantly, monthly borrowing including intervention effects, after attempting to adjust for seasonal factors, has been running at about &pound;10 billion recently, or &pound;120 billion annualised &ndash; see chart. Assuming no further change, this is consistent with the PSNB ex measure falling to &pound;126 billion in 2010-11, based on the Treasury&#8217;s March forecast that intervention effects would reduce headline borrowing by &pound;6 billion this year. (PSNB ex figures are currently available only quarterly but will be published on a monthly basis from July.)<\/p>\n<p>The OBR&#8217;s caution in extrapolating recent better trends is helpful for the Chancellor as he seeks to justify further significant tightening in next week&#8217;s Budget.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"full-image-block ssNonEditable\"><span><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 680px;\" src=\"\/storage\/ukpsnbb-18062010.gif?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1276856511592\" alt=\"\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The transfer of responsibilities to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is unlikely to result in an improvement in fiscal forecasting, which is notoriously difficult. The OBR this week projected a fall in public sector net borrowing excluding the temporary effects of financial interventions (PSNB ex) from &pound;156.1 billion in 2009-10 to &pound;155 billion in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money-moves-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5352,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3043\/revisions\/5352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}