UK government borrowing goes down as recovery helps tax take

British public borrowing saw a downfall in May from sky-high levels of a year earlier when the
government was ramping up a huge spending response to the COVID-19 crisis, and the few signs hint
that the recent recovery in the economy was boosting tax revenues.
Borrowing which excludes public sector banks totalled 24.3 billion pounds ($33.8 billion) in May,
further down from 43.8 billion pounds in the same month in 2020, the Office for National Statistics
said.
Few economists expected a shortfall of 26.0 billion pounds.
The month of May took the deficit for the first two months of the 2021/22 financial year to 53.4 billion
pounds.
This was considered to be the second-highest on record but it was down by almost 38 billion pounds
from the April-May period of last year.
The revenues started getting into the public coffers in May which rose by 7.5 billion pounds from a
year earlier to just under 57 billion pounds, reflecting the pick-up in the economy as COVID-19
restrictions were lifted.
The Government spending in May fell by almost 11 billion pounds to just under 82 billion pounds.
Finance minister Rishi Sunak has further committed to measures worth 350 billion pounds since the
start of the pandemic last year, one of the biggest COVID-19 support programmes among the world`s
main economies and saddling the public finances with a deficit equivalent to 14.3% of gross domestic
product in 2020/21.