UK borrowing surges to record $162 billion in first 3 months – Gulf Today

UK borrowing surges to record $162 billion in first 3 months – Gulf Today

UK borrowing surges to record $162 billion in first 3 months

5 hours ago

Rishi Sunak leaves Downing Street to participate in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Agence France-Presse

British government borrowing surged to a record 128 billion pounds ($162 billion) in the first three months of the 2020-21 financial year, when COVID-19 lockdown measures were tightest, more than double the entire previous year's borrowing.

Last week, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Rishi Sunak set out up to 30 billion pounds of new measures, partly to encourage businesses to take workers back when he ends a furlough scheme supporting more than 9 million jobs in October.

Public sector debt, excluding state-owned banks, stayed a fraction below the milestone of 100% of gross domestic product it appeared to pass in May, after an upward revision to GDP, and now stands at 1.984 trillion pounds or 99.6% of GDP.

This is still the highest debt burden since the 1960s, the statistics office said.

"Over the medium-term, we must, and we will, put our public finances back on a sustainable footing,“ Sunak said on Tuesday.

Most economists think British government borrowing this year will be its largest since World War Two relative to the size of