LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Liz Truss and her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, will meet the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the independent public finance watchdog, on Friday after a week of severe financial turbulence caused by the government’s draft budget.
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng will meet OBR Chairman Richard Hughes to discuss upcoming budget projections and economic and fiscal developments since March, the Treasury said.
Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday presented a draft budget for massive tax cuts without detailing funding or presenting, as is customary, growth and deficit forecasts for the OBR, which plunged markets British financiers in turmoil and caused the pound sterling to fall.
The Minister of Finance has asked the OBR to present a first version of its next economic forecasts on October 7th.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer plans to issue a budget statement on November 23 which will include the new forecasts and detail the cost of financing the budget measures as well as the measures envisaged to reduce debt.
(Report Sachin Ravikumar; French version Jean-Stphane Brosse)