Britain's public sector borrowing in October tops 11 bln pounds

Source: Xinhua | 2019-11-22

The public sector net borrowing in Britain for October 2019 totaled 11.2 billion pounds (about 14.49 billion U.S. dollars), the highest October borrowing figure since 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Thursday.

The October figure was 2.3 billion pounds more than the same month last year, said the ONS.

Meanwhile, borrowing in the current financial year-to-date (April 2019 to October 2019) was 46.3 billion pounds, 4.3 billion pounds more than in the same period last year. This is the highest April-to-October borrowing for two years.

Of the total 11.2 billion pounds borrowed by the public sector in October, central government borrowed 7.6 billion pounds, local government borrowed 1.0 billion pounds and the Bank of England's contribution was 2.5 billion pounds.

Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said on Tweeter that overall, the deficit is "leaving scope for a fiscal boost (focused on investment) next year, whichever party wins the election."

In his tweet, Simon French, chief economist at the UK merchant bank, Panmure Gordon & Co., believed that the era of year-over-year reductions in borrowing is over. Deficit is currently up 10 percent year-to-date.

"Puts UK public sector borrowing on trajectory to overshot by 10 billion pounds by yearend with significantly more to come in 2020/2021 unless economy rebounds," the tweet read. (one pound currently equals to 1.29 U.S. dollars)