Borrowing in April 2023 of £25.6 billion was £3.1 billion above our March 2023 forecast profile – thanks to both slightly lower-than-expected receipts and slightly higher-than-expected spending – and almost double the £13.7 billion figure from a year ago. This year-on-year increase largely reflects higher inflation pushing up spending on debt interest payments (£3.1 billion…

Our latest report on Fiscal risks and sustainability (FRS) will be published on Thursday 13 July. The 2023 FRS report will focus on three current pressures on the public finances: Inactivity and health, where we will consider the role of health in explaining the recent increase in labour market inactivity, analyse its impact on tax…

We have published monthly profiles for receipts, spending and borrowing in 2023-24, consistent with our March 2023 Economic and fiscal outlook, below and alongside our monthly commentary on the public finances.

Several of the UK’s tax bases are directly linked to activities that generate greenhouse gas emissions, with others indirectly linked. So as emissions fall as the UK transitions to net zero, receipts generated from these emissions-linked taxes will be affected. In this working paper, we conduct an initial, high-level analysis to explore the proportion of…

In November 2022, in Briefing Paper No. 8: Forecasting potential output – the supply side of the economy, we described the framework we use when assessing whether and how to incorporate the impact of policy measures on our forecast for potential output (the ‘supply-side’ of the economy). We have applied this framework in our November…

The initial full-year estimate of government borrowing in 2022-23 is £139.2 billion, an £18.1 billion increase on the 2021-22 figure but £13.2 billion lower than our March forecast. This difference was driven by central government spending (£8.1 billion lower than forecast), local authorities net borrowing (£3.2 billion below forecast) and public corporations net borrowing (£6.9…

Since the publication of our March 2023 Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO), we have received requests for further information on our CPI inflation categories and wholesale electricity price forecasts. We have published this new supplementary forecast information below and on the March 2023 EFO page.    

The Office for Budget Responsibility established an advisory panel of leading economic and fiscal experts in 2011 to help develop and scrutinise its work programme and methods. Since the establishment of the panel, we have held regular meetings in which we have discussed the content of each of our core publications, as well as the…

Government borrowing in February 2023 was £16.7 billion, up £9.7 billion on last year, largely thanks to spending on energy schemes. Year-to-date borrowing of £132.2 billion is up £15.5 billion (13.2 per cent) on last year. But it is only up £6.9 billion (5.9 per cent) on a like-for-like basis (correcting for student loans figures…

Richard Hughes distils the key messages from our latest Economic and fiscal outlook in his press conference presentation and accompanying speaking note.

March 2023 All policy costings presented to the Office for Budget Responsibility at Spring Budget 2023 were scrutinised and were certified as reasonable, central estimates and were included in our forecasts. The Government’s Spring Budget 2023 policy costings document briefly describes the methodologies underpinning these costings. In our March 2023 Economic and fiscal outlook we have published an assessment on the…

The economic and fiscal outlook has brightened somewhat since November. The near-term downturn is set to be shallower; medium-term output to be higher; and the budget deficit to be lower. But persistent supply-side challenges remain. Against this backdrop, the Chancellor has spent two-thirds of the improvement in the fiscal outlook on his Budget measures, providing…

While not a statutory obligation of the OBR, the publication of monthly profiles for the public sector finances consistent with our most recent EFO is something we started doing in May 2020, shortly after presenting our initial Covid reference scenario in the early weeks of the pandemic. Given the extraordinary pressures that the pandemic was…

Over the past 18 months, we have undertaken two separate user surveys to gather feedback on the length, content, and accessibility of our Economic and fiscal outlooks (EFOs). This article reports on the main messages from those surveys and how we plan to respond. December 2021 survey Our first user survey was conducted over December…

January is a big month for tax receipts, with self-assessment (SA) payments due. At £35.1 billion, SA receipts exceeded our November forecast by £5.8 billion (partly reflecting timing effects). Alongside large downward revisions to borrowing in previous months, this has left year-to-date borrowing in the first ten months of 2022-23 £22.0 billion below our forecast…