Thursday, Apr 22, 2010
UK borrowing stretches well beyond any plume of smoke from Iceland
BBC: UK borrowing hits record amount
Government borrowing hit a record high of £163.4bn this year, official figures have shown. The borrowing figure for the 2009-10 financial year is lower than the £167bn predicted by Chancellor Alistair Darling in April's Budget. Including financial intervention measures, borrowing totalled £152.8bn - lower than the £155.9bn forecast. It is the biggest annual borrowing figure for a UK government in peacetime.
Posted by jack c @ 10:09 AM (1299 views) Add Comment
13 Comments
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1. matt_the_hat said...
But we saved 2% against the forecast - Well done Zanu liebor
2. d'oh said...
You beat me to it matt.
[sarcasm]
What a marvellous indication of the frugality of our government, undershooting a deficit of 165 billion by 2%. GB should be commended, nay knighted for this!
[/sarcasm]
3. mark said...
I wonder if we are about to lose the credit rating, as some shares are dropping like a brick from the bt tower
4. jack c said...
Bit of an old trick in my opinion ie Darling over egg's the pudding @ £167bn and when the actual figure (assuming it is accurate) comes in @ £163.4bn lots of people breath a sigh of relief and the Government starts spouting that the economy is back on track and should not be undermined by a change on 6th May. These figures are truly frightening and disaster looms ever closer
5. uncle tom said...
The meaning of such large numbers is easily lost..
..think of it as £6,285 per household..
..£6,285 for each home that the government is spending, but is not matched by tax receipts.
The real cost of borrowing, nett of inflation (as long as we keep our AAA rating) is about 2%. This means that the extra taxation needed - in perpetuity.. - to cover this excess, amounts to 35p per household, per day, forever....
..put another way, it's as though we were investing in an additional royal family, every other day!
6. brickormortis said...
Mark, GB ought to fall with equal acceleration and reach terminal velocity just as well as a brick so can we drop him off the bT toiwer instead?
Anyway, were we not suppsed to undershoot this 173 billion or so by about 20 billionish a month or two ago?
Anyway, what about: "A further £23.5bn was borrowed in March, the figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed." If this monthly borrowing were to continue, we would be in real trouble!
7. brickormortis said...
As for the % of GDP figure, this data seems to suggest otherwise:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=277
???
8. uncle tom said...
To clarify, that is an extra 35p, every day, or about £125 extra each year that we will have to pay in tax, and get nothing in return..
9. timmy t said...
I love this line: "Borrowing in March is typically high as civil servants seek to spend the remainder of their annual budgets."
Meanwhile, back in the real world, people are looking for ways to reduce their spending. They just don't get it!!
10. mrmickey said...
The clincher for this country is that so much of our debt is in foreign currencies so we can't inflate our way out of this mess without eventually defaulting on our debt, very similar to a Banana republic really.
11. uncle tom said...
Mrmickey,
Actually, it isn't. There's a lot of UK debt held by people overseas, but their holdings are almost entirely in sterling; so yes, we could deflate it away; and unless the next government tackles the problem head-on, that is almost certain to happen eventually.
12. uncle tom said...
Sorry, meant to say inflate, not deflate!
13. mrmickey said...
Uncle Tom, but as we inflate Sterling the burdon of debt aquired in foreign currencies will increase not decrease.