EU-kommisjonen er ikke fornøyd med Gordon Browns nedskjæringer og tror forhåpningene om vekst er for optimistiske. Pundet faller til under 1.50 dollar. Ratingbyrået Moody antyder at Storbritannia kan miste trippel-A-statusen.
PIIGS-landene – Portugal, Italia, Irland, Spania, nevnes som risikoutsatte finansielt. Men til disse kan også regnes Storbritannia.
Sterling plunged back below $1.50 today after the European Commission warned the British Government that it was not doing enough to curb the country’s spiralling debt.
The pound tumbled against the dollar $1.5056 to $1.4975, close to a nine-month low reached two weeks ago, in response to the leaked document which has emerged just before the Budget on March 24.
The draft assessment of Britain’s budget deficit cut plans – made because the UK has breached EU stability rules – stated: “The fiscal strategy in the convergence programme is not sufficiently ambitious and needs to be significantly reinforced.
“A credible timeframe for restoring public finances to a sustainable position requires additional fiscal tightening measures beyond those currently planned.”
Related LinksIt says that plans to cut spending in the current year are sufficient but raises doubts over official growth forecasts. It warns that the size of the taxpayers’ stake in Britain’s banking sector is adding to worries over whether the Government can scale back its borrowing.
Britain is liable for assessment by the EU because its debts breached the threshold of 3 per cent of gross domestic product.
The warning is embarrassing for Gordon Brown and the Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, coming only a week before his Budget, which is expected to provide details on how Labour would meet its promise to halve the deficit over four years.
Figures on Thursday will show whether Britain has plunged farther into the red than the £178 billion that Mr Darling forecast last December.