British government borrowing hit a record high for May last month, increasing pressure on Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to restrain spending over the rest of the year.
The Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday that the public sector net cash requirement stood at 7.381 billion pounds last month, some 2 billion pounds higher than a year earlier and compared with a forecast of 4.9 billion pounds.
Public sector net borrowing, the government's preferred accruals-based measure, also posted a May record, coming in at 10.044 billion pounds, some 600 million pounds higher than a year earlier.
Economists said that while the figures did not bode well for Brown's full-year PSNB forecast of 36 billion pounds, it was too early to make a judgement given that just two months of the fiscal year have elapsed.
"While we don't believe the Chancellor's fiscal rules are in jeopardy it does point very clearly to the need for medium-term public expenditure restraint," said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec.
The ONS said the deterioration in May was driven by higher government expenditure. This was up 3.1 percent on the year but would have been even higher were it not for a change in the timing of grant payments to local authorities.
The PSNB for the fiscal year so far stood at 10.282 billion pounds compared with 8.613 billion pounds a year earlier but the ONS noted that some North Sea oil corporation tax payments usually paid in April had been made in January because - around 1 to 1.8 billion pounds.
The current budget in May, meanwhile, which is used to measure the golden rule - that the government only borrows to invest over the economic cycle - posted its biggest deficit since records began in 1998.