Chancellor Alistair Darling will present the government’s 2009 Budget statement on 22 April, two weeks after the G20 summit where the world leaders will meet to discuss to tackle the global economic crisis. The Budget statement is likely to include measures that will help businesses in the UK to recover from recession.
The announced date is almost a month later than the usual date and will be presented after the House of Commons resumes from its Easter recess. This delay, latest since 1997, is said to allow Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Chancellor time to assess the impact of their fiscal measures on the recession-hit economy and also analyse US President Barack Obama’s $800bn (£561.58bn) package to rescue the US economy.
In contrast to Darling’s prediction in his pre-budget report that UK will bounce back to “growth in the second half of this [financial] year”, the UK economy is likely to shrink further for most of 2009. On Wednesday, delivering a gloomy forecast, the Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said that UK has slipped into a “deep recession”. Economists believe that the government will be forced to revise its prediction because it is thought that the recession is likely to continue through till 2010.
In November’s pre-budget report, Darling announced VAT rate cuts and gave an optimistic prediction that GDP in 2009 will fall between 0.75% and 1.25% as against the current forecast of about 4%.
Separately, the G20 summit will be held on 2 April at ExCel Centre in east London and is a follow-up to its November summit held in Washington that witnessed major economies such as the UK, US and Germany announce supportive fiscal measures.
