London - Britain announced a sharp cut in borrowing projections on Thursday and said a key measure of the budget could be back in surplus by 2018/19, helped by a recovering economy.
Finance minister George Osborne said borrowing on the government's preferred measure - which excludes distortions from the transfer of Royal Mail pensions and the Bank of England's Asset Purchase Facility - would be 111 billion pounds this fiscal year, below the 120 billion pounds envisaged in March.
Borrowing will fall to 96 billion pounds in 2014/15, 79 billion pounds in 2015/16, 51 billion pounds the year after and 23 billion pounds the year after that.
Over the five-year forecast period, borrowing on this underlying measure will be 73 billion pounds less than forecast at the time of his budget in March, Osborne said. - Reuters