By Richard Johnstone | 22 March 2013
Public sector borrowing in February was £2.8bn, down £9bn on the same month last year, the Office for National Statistics has announced.
The public finance figures, published yesterday, were flattered by the inclusion of additional one-off revenues to the Treasury. Both a £2.6bn cash transfer from the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing programme and £2.3bn raised from the sale of next generation 4G mobile phone licences are included in the figures.
Overall, central government borrowing was down £6.7bn to £4.1bn in the month, while local government borrowing fell by £2.3bn, leaving councils in surplus by £1.1bn.
For the 11 months of the financial year as a whole, public sector net borrowing was £66.9bn, £37.3bn lower than the same period the previous year, when it was £104.2bn.
However, this figure has also been affected by the transfers from the QE scheme and the 4G mobile phone spectrum sale, which brought in a total of £34.4bn.
Excluding these factors, underlying borrowing from April 2012 to February 2013 is £101.3bn, just £2.9 billion lower than the year before.
Publication of the figures comes a day after the Office for Budget Responsibility published the latest borrowing projections alongside the Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget statement.
Excluding the one-off payments, borrowing in the 2013/14 financial year is now predicted to be £120.9bn, down just £100m down from the £121bn borrowed in 2012/13.
However, if the one-off payments are included, this would reduce the figure to £86bn for the year.
