Wednesday, November 23, 2016

BBC News - Autumn Statement: Big increase in borrowing predicted

There will be substantial increases in government borrowing in each of the next five years, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
Chart showing borrowing forecasts
Chancellor Philip Hammond confirmed that he would abandon the government target to spend less than it earned in 2019-20.
The OBR predicts it will now borrow £21.9bn that year, compared with the £10bn surplus previously forecast.
There have also been cuts to the amount of growth expected in 2017 and 2018.
The OBR expects the economy to grow by 1.4% in 2017, down from the 2.2% it predicted in March.
The growth forecast for this year has been raised slightly to 2.1% from 2.0%.
It expects growth to be 2.4% slower in the next five years as a result of the Brexit vote.
Growth in 2018 is expected to be 1.7%, down from the 2.1% forecast in March, and is predicted to return to the 2.1% rate previously forecast in 2019.
But Chancellor Philip Hammond stressed in his Autumn Statement speech that the forecast for 2017 was still equal to the International Monetary Fund's prediction for the German economy and ahead of its forecast for "many of our European neighbours including France and Italy - a fact that will no doubt be a source of very considerable irritation to some".
Instead of trying to balance the budget in 2019-20, the government will instead aim to do so as soon as possible in the next Parliament as part of its new targets.
The OBR warned that there was greater uncertainty than usual surrounding these forecasts, especially for the last two years of the period, because it does not know the terms on which the UK will leave the European Union.
"Our economy forecast is not based on a precise prediction of the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, but rather on broad-brush judgements consistent with a range of possible outcomes," the OBR document said.
"We have been given no information about the government's goals and expectations for the negotiations that is not already in the public domain. And we would not in any event wish to base our forecast on assumptions we could not be transparent about."
The lower growth next year is blamed on lower investment and weaker consumer demand "driven respectively by greater uncertainty and by higher inflation resulting from sterling depreciation".
Slowing economic growth is expected to spur unemployment - rising from the current rate of 4.8% to reach 5.5% by the end of 2018.
"This relatively modest increase in the rate equates to around 200,000 more people unemployed," the OBR said.
Much of the slowing predicted by the OBR is due to rising inflation as a result of the weakness of the pound.
CPI inflation next year is expected to be 2.3%, up from the previous forecast of 1.6%, while the prediction for 2018 is up from 2% to 2.5%.
The OBR said that its forecasts were "somewhat less pessimistic" than the Bank of England's predictions from earlier this month and also the Treasury's analysis from before the EU referendum.
The Treasury had predicted that the economy would contract in the first quarter after a vote to leave the EU, although that was based on the assumption that Article 50 would be triggered immediately, starting the process of leaving.
The OBR unexpectedly included a chapter in its analysis comparing its forecasts with what would have happened to the economy if the vote had gone the other way.
It concludes that the vote to leave the EU will cut growth by reducing migration, slowing the growth of productivity and increasing inflation.

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