in his Budget last month may have already made cutting the UK’s national debt harder. The move “could worsen the debt trajectory in the medium term”, it cautioned.It said global debt is projected to increase to close to 100 per cent of GDP by 2029. The increase will be led by some large economies including the UK which “critically need to take action to address fundamental imbalances between spending and revenues”.
The IMF found that global public debt “edged up again” last year, reversing a couple of years of decline, due largely to a fall in revenues “as windfall revenues from inflation waned”. “Fiscal tightening is projected for 2024, but it is subject to considerable uncertainty,” the IMF said. “History suggests, and evidence confirms, that governments tend to spend more and/or tax less in an election year,” Vitor Gaspar, head of IMF’s fiscal affairs, said.