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Great Britain’s public finances in January swung a smaller than expected surplus when Chancellor Rachel Reeves is fighting to hold her budget plans on the track and start the economy.
In January in January, the public sector was 15.4 billion GBP, more than last year and the highest this month since 1993, the Office for National Statistics announced on Friday, citing record income and capital gains tax revenue.
However, this was still smaller than the surplus of 20 billion GBP in January, which the office for budget responsibility had expected when it recently published forecasts in addition to the October budget.
The numbers come when the Chancellor has difficulty increasing growth in the Great Britain economy While you adhere to your self -imposed fiscal rules that determine that the current expenses without investments are financed by tax revenue.
Their plans were blown from the course by poor economic data, including flatlining growth, which threatened to extinguish the error rate of 9.9.9 billion GBP from October.
Separate ONS numbers published on Friday showed a stronger recovery in retail sales than expected in January. After a decline of 0.6 percent in December, sales volume increased by 1.7 percent month by 1.7 percent.
However, retail sales in the three months to January were still 0.6 percent lower than in the previous quarter.
The pound increased easily in the retail sales data, but then fell to $ 1.266 by 0.1 percent compared to the dollar.
The public finance Should continue to be burdened because the government is exposed to pressure to increase defense expenses at the urging of US President Donald Trump.
On Friday, the ONS said that the borrowing for the financial year was higher than a year earlier and a total of 118.2 billion GBP-11.8 billion GBP was more than at the same point in 2023-24 and higher than the 105 , 4 billion GBP of the OBR expected in October.
Alex Kerr, British economist at the Capital Economics in the consultation, said that the “series of bad news” in the latest economic data had underlined the difficult decisions with which the Chancellor was confronted.
He added that the pressure that the government was obliged to spend higher defense spending “the OBR probably comes to the conclusion that the Chancellor’s Chancellor was wiped out against her tax rules”.
“The British fiscal position remains a concern,” said Dennis Tatarkov, Senior Economist at KPMG UK.
“If the Chancellor is still committed to her fiscal goals, the spring declaration may have to contain more tax changes,” he added.
The British fiscal view could improve up to the final report in addition to the declaration of March 26, which means that tax increases or hard expenditure rushes are unnecessary.
However, the initial forecast of the OBR, which was given to the Ministry of Finance at the beginning of this month, showed that Reeves’ head room was wiped out.
A budget surplus is often carried out at the beginning of the calendar year, since the income and capital gains tax rated at the end of January.
The ONS stated that the income from these taxes of 36.2 billion GBP in January 2025 more than a year earlier and the highest for January since the beginning of the monthly records in 1999 – however, they still remained the forecasts of the OBR .
Kerr said that the overwhelming tax revenue reflects the underlying weakness of the economy, but found that state expenditure also ran somewhat before the OBR forecasts.
Darren Jones, Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, said the government was “obliged to provide economic stability and to meet our non -negotiable budget rules”.
This article has been changed since the first publication to reflect the fact
