Fashion
UK budget mildly deflationary; debt to climb past 106%: Fitch
The rating agency said the government’s latest fiscal package is broadly in line with projections made when it affirmed the UK at ‘AA-’/Stable in August but said that the path to consolidation is becoming more challenging.
Fitch Ratings has deemed the budget marginally deflationary, sees debt rising above 106 per cent of GDP by 2027.
The agency said the UK budget broadly aligns with its August deficit projections but signals of rising implementation risks due to back-loaded tax measures and tight spending plans.
New taxes total £26 billion (~$34.37 billion) by FY29, while social spending rises further.
Fitch said the budget’s new tax measures represent £26 billion (~$34.37 billion), or 0.7 per cent of GDP, by fiscal 2029 (FY29), with threshold freezes contributing £8 billion (~$10.57 billion). New Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) data show general government net borrowing projections 0.2 percentage points (pp) higher on average in 2026–2028 than in March, before falling 0.2 points in 2029, Fitch Ratings said in a release.
Fiscal data since summer remain broadly in line with Fitch’s forecast for the general government deficit to narrow by 0.6 pp in 2025 to 5.3 per cent of GDP and then to 4.4 per cent in 2027, around 0.7 points slower than the government’s new targets.
The agency highlighted material uncertainty around implementation, particularly given the challenging expenditure consolidation outlined in June’s Spending Review, which the budget largely preserves. Real-terms public-sector current spending growth has been tightened further in FY29 to zero, averaging 1.2 per cent in FY26–FY28 compared with 3.4 per cent in FY24–FY25.
Fitch noted that many tax measures are highly back-loaded, coming into effect closer to mid-2029, the latest possible timing of the next general election. A large portion of the tax plan also consists of numerous smaller measures, making the overall impact less transparent than the broader income tax rise the government signalled before the budget. Options to raise further revenue are politically constrained by 2024 election pledges not to increase personal income tax, VAT or National Insurance.
Still, Fitch said Chancellor Rachel Reeves is demonstrating firmer commitment to the fiscal rule than recent predecessors. Last year’s decision to shorten the rolling forecast horizon from five to three years from 2026 has reduced the scope to delay real fiscal adjustment. Aligning fiscal plans more closely with three-year spending reviews also makes it harder to rely on unrealistic spending cuts to fill fiscal gaps.
Budget headroom has increased from £12 billion to £22 billion, around 0.6 per cent of GDP, but Fitch said this remains limited and constrains efforts to improve policy predictability.
Revenue projections have been reshaped by a £16 billion downgrade in expected tax receipts due to lower OBR productivity assumptions, reducing average GDP growth in 2026–2029 by 0.3 pp to 1.5 per cent. Upward revisions to inflation and wage growth more than offset this decline. The OBR’s updated medium-term GDP growth outlook is now closer to Fitch’s trend estimate of 1.4 per cent, of which total factor productivity contributes only 0.3 points.
Although sustained high nominal gilt yields represent a significant fiscal risk, the UK’s long average debt maturity of 13.7 years helps contain projected debt-interest requirements, which Fitch expects to rise modestly to 7.4 per cent of revenue in 2027 from 7 per cent in 2024.
Fitch projects modest GDP outperformance in the near term compared with its August forecast of 1.2 per cent for 2025, although a weakening labour market poses a small downside risk to its 1.2 per cent projection for 2026. The agency judges the budget as marginally deflationary and expects inflation to fall to 2.4 per cent by end-2026.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (HU)