LONDON: Britain’s public finances recorded their first July surplus in three years, driven by the strongest tax receipts for the month since records began in 1997.
Friday’s official figures will come as welcome reading to Chancellor George Osborne, as they showed the 12th successive month of falling year-to-date public sector net borrowing, excluding banks.
July traditionally sees a surplus thanks to big tax inflows.
The Office for National Statistics reported a July public finance surplus, excluding banks, of 1.290 billion pounds. Economists polled by Reuters expected a 1.3 billion pound surplus.
The public finances were boosted by 18.5 billion pounds of income tax receipts — the biggest intake for a July since records began in 1997 — and up almost a billion pounds on July 2014’s haul.
For the first four months of the 2015/16 tax year, public sector net borrowing was 24.0 billion pounds, down 23 percent compared with the April-July period of last year.
British finance minister George Osborne said last month that he was aiming to bring down the budget deficit in the current financial year to 69.5 billion pounds, or 3.7 percent of economic output.
In the 2014/15 financial year, the deficit stood at 4.9 percent of gross domestic product, half its level in 2010 when Osborne’s Conservative Party first took power but still bigger than the hole in the finances of most other advanced economies.
Public sector net debt, excluding state-controlled banks, totalled 1.505 trillion pounds in June equivalent to 80.8 percent of GDP.
