UK public borrowing increases

UK Chancellor George Osborne's plan to bring down the budget deficit was dealt another blow after it emerged that borrowing unexpectedly increased last month, figures showed here Friday. Public sector net borrowing, excluding financial interventions such as bank bailouts, was 17.5 billion pounds in November, up 1.2 billion on the same month last year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Economists had predicted borrowing would fall slightly to around 16 billion pounds. Meanwhile, updated gross domestic product (GDP) figures showed the economy did not grow quite as much as previously expected, with GDP revised down to 0. 9% in the third quarter of the year, from 1%. Public sector borrowing for the year to date is 92.7 billion pounds, excluding a one-off 28 billion pounds boost from the transfer of the Royal Mail pension fund into Treasury ownership, which is 9.9% higher than the same period last year. Within the November figures, the picture is much the same as previous months, with Government spending outstripping tax receipts. Total tax receipts were 0.6% higher at 39.1 billion pounds in October, while total expenditure rose 6.3% to 55 billion pounds. The ONS said the Treasury was looking into why income tax fell 12.3% to 9.2 billion in November. The ONS said today's figures do not take into account the transfer of assets from the Bank of England's money printing programme into the Treasury, and the auction of bandwidth for 4G mobile broadband services, which is expected to boost the finances. In the Chancellor's Autumn Statement earlier this month, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said it expected borrowing to be 108 billion pounds in 2012/13, compared to 119.9 billion in the March estimate.