LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s government borrowed 19.1 billion pounds ($26.6 billion) last month, less than the 21.0 billion pounds forecast in a Reuters poll, putting it on course to come in slightly below the towering deficit forecast for this financial year.
Official data published on Friday showed that February’s borrowing took the budget deficit in the first 11 months of the financial year to almost 279 billion pounds.
Britain’s budget forecasters said earlier this month the government looked set to borrow more than 350 billion pounds in the financial year which ends on March 31, the highest borrowing relative to the size of the economy since World War Two.
The year-to-date figures published by the Office for National Statistics do not include the 27.2 billion pounds of COVID loan write-offs which the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates will need to be made.
The OBR also estimated that borrowing in the soon-to-start 2021/22 financial year would fall to 234 billion pounds, still more than four times the deficit in 2019/20 which included only one month of the coronavirus crisis.
Public debt in February stood at 2.131 trillion pounds or 97.5% of annual economic output, holding at levels not seen since the early 1960s, the Office for National Statistics said.
($1 = 0.7184 pounds)
(Reporting by David Milliken and William Schomberg)
