UK registers smallest budget shortfall since 2008 on better tax receipts

Just two days after UK Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne presented his Budget for the financial year 2015, country's public finances showed a considerable improvement. On Thursday, the Office for National Statistics published data on Britain's public sector net borrowing in February. Net borrowing, which includes all government's tax receipts and expenses but excludes data from public-sector banks, stayed at 6.9 billion pounds last month, down more than 30% from 10.4 billion pounds during the same month a year ago. Analysts, on average, estimated the budget gap to decrease down to 8.4 billion pounds. The largest part of improvement came from tax receipts as public revenues climbed 7.2%, while spending decreased 0.7%. Despite that, UK budget deficit still remains at a relatively high level. With annual gap between expenditures and tax revenues amounting to around 90 billion pounds, country's deficit-to-GDP ratio remains at 5%, or far above the same indicator for major EU economies, such as Germany or France. However, British economy is one of the fastest growing among G7 nations, meaning that brightening perspectives for GDP advance and employment are likely to drive UK budget deficit down in the coming years. Mr Osborne, in turn, intends to fully eliminate the shortfall by financial year 2018-19. It is likely to be reached by further spending cuts, in case the Conservative Party is re-elected into the government after the May 7 general election.