Public sector net borrowing falls to £13.7bn in December 2011

Public sector borrowing in December was £2.2bn lower than last year, due to strong growth in receipts and lower government spending. Over the first nine months of 2011-12, borrowing is now £11.3bn lower than in the same period last year. To meet our November forecast for the full year, borrowing would need to be £2.3bn higher in the next three months – we expect receipts growth to slow and spending growth to increase over the rest of the year.

What's new

Supplementary forecast information release

24th January 2012

The OBR has released supplementary market sector employment and oil and gas industry expenditure forecasts. These can be found in the supporting documents section of the main Economic and fiscal outlook page. We have also published the price, production and expenditure determinants, which underlie the long-term projections for oil and gas revenues. These can be found in the [...]

November 2011 Economic and fiscal outlook

29th November 2011

In our updated forecasts we expect the weaker economic outlook to increase public sector borrowing and debt. In response the Government has cut its medium-term spending plans in order to keep on track to hit its fiscal targets. Read the full report on the main Economic and fiscal outlook page.

Working paper No.2: The long-run difference between RPI and CPI inflation

29th November 2011

Differences between the RPI and CPI measures of inflation are important because they have different effects on the OBR’s fiscal forecast. Working Paper No. 2 discusses the differences in RPI and CPI inflation and looks at the prospects for the evolution of the wedge between these two measures over the long term.

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Estimating the UK’s historical output gap

The OBR's approach to estimating the output gap has been to combine indicators of the cyclical position of the economy, although to date the OBR has applied these techniques only back to 2007. Working Paper No.1 paper explores methods of extending the cyclical indicator approach over the past to produce a historical series for the UK output gap, and compares these with historical series produced using other approaches.

Working paper No.1: Estimating the UK's historical output gap