Economic And Fiscal Outlook PDF Download

The 'Economic and Fiscal Outlook: November 2015 (Cm. 9153)' sets out forecasts up to 2020-21. It also assesses whether the Government is on course to meet the medium-term fiscal objectives that it has set itself, which were approved by Parliament in October 2015 update to the 'Charter for Budget Responsibility'. The 'Charter for Budget Responsibility' requires the OBR to judge whether the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of hitting its fiscal targets under existing policy. The current version of the Charter sets out the target for borrowing, debt and welfare spending that are assessed in this forecast: the fiscal mandate, which requires a surplus on public sector net borrowing by the end of 2019-20 and in each subsequent year; the supplement target, which requires public sector net debt to fall as a percentage of GDP in each year to 2019-20 and the welfare cap, a limit on a subset of welfare spending, at cash levels set out by the Treasury for each year to 2020-21 in the July 2015 budget. The OBR judged that the Government has a greater than 50 per cent chance of meeting the fiscal mandate and supplementary target. It expects the budget to be in surplus by 0.5 per cent of GDP (£10.1 billion) in 2019-20 and public sector net debt to fall by 0.6 per cent of GDP in 2015-16 and by bigger margins in subsequent years. Finally, the central forecast shows that the terms of the welfare cap are set to be breached in three successive years from 2016-17 to 2018-19, with the net effect of policy measures raising welfare cap spending in each of those years, and to well above the 2 per cent forecast margin in 2016-17 and 2017-18. The terms of the cap are set to be observed by very small margins in 2019-20 and 2020-21, with spending above the cap but within the forecast margin and with the net effect of measures in those years reducing spending.