UK's Osbourne Announces Land Sales as Deficit Narrows

        By Jon Sindreu and Jason Douglas
        LONDON--U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne Tuesday announced plans to sell billions of pounds of publicly-owned land, as official figures showed that Britain's borrowing needs continue to fall.
        Mr. Osborne launched this year's spending review, which aims to detail where 20 billion pounds ($31.2 billion) of cuts in departmental spending will come from. Government departments will be asked to specify by November 25 how they will contribute to the government's target of selling at least 150,000 public-sector homes by 2020.
        The government has already sold land with capacity for 100,000 homes in the last five years, the Treasury said, raising more than GBP1.7 billion and saving an additional GBP800 million in running costs, but taxpayers still own more than GBP300 billion worth of land and buildings--a figure that Mr. Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, plans to keep curtailing.
        The spending review comes as the U.K. government continues to reduce its budget deficit. The public sector in the U.K. borrowed GBP9.4 billion in June, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday. Figures exclude borrowing by state-owned banks.
        Since the fiscal year started in April, borrowing figures have been positive for Mr. Osborne, who has turned balancing the government's books into a key policy objective. Compared with the same month last year, the government borrowed about GBP800 million less.
        In fact, in his latest budget address, Mr. Osborne said he would slow the pace of government cuts, spreading out austerity measures further into the five-year parliament. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the U.K.'s independent fiscal watchdog, now expects the Treasury to achieve a budget surplus in 2020, a year later than March estimates showed.
        In order to meet this target, the government would have to borrow no more than GBP69.5 billion--about 3.7% of total national output--by March next year. Besides saving on departmental expenditure, the Chancellor has announced GBP12 billion of cuts in welfare spending, as well as a pledge to raise an additional GBP5 billion from clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion.
        Write to Jon Sindreu at jon.sindreu@wsj.com and Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com
        (END) Dow Jones Newswires

        July 21, 2015 04:51 ET (08:51 GMT)

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