LONDON (Reuters) – British finance minister Rishi Sunak said it was too soon to look at how to fund the longer-term financing cost of measures to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, following a newspaper report that officials were recommending tax rises or spending cuts.
“It’s premature right now to speculate about that far in the future. We are living through a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty,” Sunak told Sky News on Wednesday.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper said officials had told Sunak that 25-30 billion pounds of tax rises or spending cuts would be needed to cover extra borrowing costs under its main scenario, rising to 90 billion pounds in a potential worst case.
(Reporting by David Milliken and Alistair Smout; editing by Michael Holden)
