UK may face short target of public finances

Britain's Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said an unexpected downturn in the public finances in September was likely to be repeated in the next few months and bust the government's annual borrowing limits set earlier this year.

The treasury's room for maneuver would be tight after figures for the first six months of the financial year showed tax receipts had failed to match projections by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), said an economist at the IFS Thomas Pop.

Thomas said the trend so far suggests that over the year as a whole receipts could undershoot by pound 14 billion. The income from other sources could limit the gape in Treasury's budget to pound 8 billion.