Britain's public net borrowing climbs to 13.3bn pounds

British public sector net borrowing was 13.3 billion pounds (about 22.61 billion U.S. dollars) in May 2014, 4.6 billion pounds higher than in May 2013, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Friday.
The public deficit is also higher than market expectation consensus of 12.2 billion pounds.
Tax receipts in May were up just 1.1 percent year-on-year, compared to a full-year forecast of growth of 4.7 percent, said ONS, adding spending increased 0.3 percent year-on-year.
At the end of May 2014, Britain's public sector net debt excluding temporary effects of financial interventions was 1,284.5 billion pounds, equivalent to 76.1 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), data showed.
For the fiscal year to date 2013/14, the country's public sector net borrowing was 94.9 billion pounds, which was 14.2 billion pounds greater than the same period in 2012/13.
Samuel Tombs, senior UK Economist at Capital Economics, said in a note that May's public borrowing figures contain tentative signs that the British government may be beginning to struggle to bring down the deficit in line with the fiscal plans.
"While the economic recovery may now be fairly strong, it still appears to be struggling to have much of an impact on the borrowing numbers," he said.
In April, the OBR, the independent fiscal watchdog to Treasury, foretasted a full year deficit of 108 billion pounds in 2013/14 and a drop to 95.5 billion pounds in 2014/15. Borrowing fell t0 6.6 percent of GDP in the last fiscal year. (1 pound = 1.70 U.S. dollars)