UK debt to GDP ratio will fall this year

The big rabbit that the UK Chancellor has pulled out of the hat is the change to the debt path. 

In his 2010 Budget one of his new fiscal rules was a supplementary rule that the debt to GDP ratio would have to fall in 2015-16. 

By 2012 it seemed clear that this rule could not be met so the target date for debt reduction was pushed back a year to 2016-17.

Societe Generale notes...

• Now the Chancellor has been able to bring that forward to the original date of 2015-16. How has he managed to do this, given that his aim was to deliver a broadly neutral budget? The answer is through asset sales. He has conjured up an additional £20bn of sales in the 2015-16 fiscal year. 
  
  
• He plans to sell at least £9bn of Lloyds Bank shares and to divest the Treasury's entire holding of £13.2bn of mortgage assets. (Some sales were already planned so the additional amount is less than the sum of these two).