UK balances day-to-day budget for first time since early 2000s

Bloomberg

Britain was in surplus on its day-to-day budget for the first full fiscal year since the early 2000s, a milestone that is almost certain to revive calls for an end to austerity.
Revenue exceeded spending by 112 million pounds ($156 million) in the 12 months through March, meaning Britain is now borrowing only to finance capital investment, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed on Tuesday.
Including investment, the deficit narrowed to 42.6 billion pounds, the least in 11 years and below the 45.2 billion pounds predicted by budgetary officials last month. In March alone, the shortfall unexpectedly narrowed to 1.3 billion pounds, the lowest for the month since 2004.
Almost a decade of austerity has seen the deficit fall from 9.9 percent of GDP in the aftermath of the financial crisis to 2.1 percent last year, but the cuts have left voters weary and taken a heavy toll on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government.
The squeeze has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of local-authority jobs and left hospital emergency services struggling to cope with a spike in winter illnesses. In a sign that the government is yielding to public pre- ssure, it announced last month it was lifting the cap on pay increases for nurses and other workers in the National Health Service.
The elimination of the current-budget deficit came a year earlier than the Office for Budget Res-ponsibility predicted but two years later than George Osborne envisaged when he became chancellor in 2010 — before the European sovereign-debt crisis hit economies across the region.