The Fiscal sustainability report (FSR) usually focuses on long-term projections for the public finances and sustainability of debt. Typically, our most recent medium term forecast serves as the ‘jumping-off point’ but as the March 2020 forecast was finalised in February before the full impact of the Coronavirus pandemic became clear, for this report we produced three scenarios for the medium term before extending our assessment to the long term.
The structure the report is as follows:
- Chapter 1: describes the main conditioning assumptions underpinning our analysis and outlines our approach at each step of the process.
- Chapters 2 (economy) and 3 (fiscal) lay out three medium-term scenarios that then serve as different starting points for our long-term sustainability analysis.
- Chapter 4: the conclusions of the long-term sustainability analysis.
- Chapter 5: devoting more space than usual to the risks to sustainability posed by the shock.
Ordinarily the FSR would contain a discussion of the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA). The 2019-20 WGA was, however, delayed by the pandemic.
