Budget 2025’s priority: don’t kill the recovery

Nicola Willis: the return to growth next year "will be noticeable". (Image: BusinessDesk)

Tue, 17 Dec 2024

For all the talk about austerity, the half-year fiscal and economic update is remarkable for its evidence that the Government has not made much of a dent in its spending track at all.Exhibit A is the forecast for “public consumption” – a proxy for the extent to which everything the Government funds is either adding to or subtracting from growth, known as the “fiscal impulse”.In the Budget in May, public consumption was forecast to reduce by 1.4% in the year to June 2024 and a whopping 2.2% contraction in the year t...

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