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British fiscal deficit narrows to 6.8 bln pounds in April

Xinhua, May 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

British government saw a fiscal deficit of 6.8 billion pounds (or 10.6 billion U.S. dollars) in April 2015, a decrease of 2.5 billion pounds compared with a year earlier, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Friday.

The deficit is significantly lower than the market estimation consensus of 8.3 billion pounds.

The ONS also revised up the public sector net borrowing for fiscal year 2014-15 (April 2014 to March 2015) to 87.7 billion pounds from 87.3 billion pounds that it announced last month. The fiscal deficit was equivalent to around 4.8 percent of Britain's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

At the end of April, Britain's public sector net debt was 1,487.7 billion pounds, equivalent to 80.4 percent of the country's GDP. It was 83.6 billion pounds higher than that in a year earlier, figures showed.

Samuel Tombs, Senior UK Economist at Capital Economics, commented in a note: "While April's figures bring more good news on the current health of the UK's public finances, a major and painful re-intensification of the fiscal squeeze will still be required for the Government to obtain an overall budget surplus in this parliament."

British Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne plans to announce a new budget plan in July, when he is expected to outline strategy to eliminate the deficit by the end of 2017 and achieve a fiscal surplus in fiscal year 2018-19. (1 pound = 1.56 U.S. dollars) Endit