Fiscal costs of crisis may be greater than OBR predicts

With the Office for Budget Responsibility’s government borrowing forecasts only including the cost of just one of the extra four months of the Job Retention Scheme and no medium-term scarring effects of the crisis, borrowing is likely to end up being quite a bit higher. We forecast that the budget deficit will reach £340bn (17.5% of GDP) in 2020/21, over £40bn more than the OBR expects.

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