The Office for National Statistics announced that in the UK the public sector net borrowing, excluding public sector banks, was £151.9 billion (or 5.3% of GDP) in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, £20.7 billion (or 0.5 percentage points) more than in the previous year and the third highest total on record.
The S&P Global survey in April also revealed that the UK’s private sector went into decline, as new export orders dropped. The reading from the survey was 48.2 in April, down from 51.5 in March.
The output was below the 50 mark for the first time since October 2023.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded the growth for many of the advanced economies due to uncertainty surrounding trade tariffs.
In the US, growth is now expected to be 1.8% this year, down from the IMF’s estimate of 2.7% for the US in January.
The forecast for the UK has also been cut to 1.1% this year.
Tobias Adrian, Financial Counsellor and Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF, said: “Our baseline assessment for global financial stability is that risks have been increasing, and there are really two main factors here: one is that the overall level of policy uncertainty has increased; and the second factor is that the forecast of economic activity going forward is slightly lower, as Pierre‑Olivier presented at the World Economic Outlook press conference just now. So, it’s a combination of a lower baseline and larger downside risks.”
