LONDON: British state borrowing rose in November, official data showed on Friday, hampering finance minister George Osborne's ongoing efforts to slash the deficit.
Public sector net borrowing the government's preferred measure of the budget deficit climbed to £17.5 billion ($28.4 billion, 21.5 billion euros) last month, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement.
That overshot market expectations for public borrowing of £17 billion in November, according to analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires, and compared with borrowing of £16.3 billion in November 2011.
The data excludes the temporary effects of financial interventions such as bank bailouts.
Earlier this month, on December 5, Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne had warned Britons that they faced an extra year of austerity measures, extending his spending cuts and tax hikes until 2018 in his autumn budget statement.
"The Chancellor acknowledged ... that the public finances are taking longer to rectify than had been targeted," said IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer.
Archer added that Osborne "chose to extend fiscal consolidation by another year rather than enacting more austerity now and risk damaging already muted and fragile economic growth prospects".
Separately on Friday, the ONS also downgraded its estimate for Britain's third-quarter economic growth to 0.9 percent, from the previous figure of 1.0 percent.
Despite the news, Britain a member of the European Union but not the eurozone still powered out of its longest double-dip recession since the 1950s between July and September.
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