What disturbed me was that the new minister seemed to be saying that the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) was misleading, with the implication that the Treasury was incompetent or dishonest. Here is what HYEFU 2023 says:On the basis of the economic and fiscal information available to it, the Treasury has used its best professional judgement in preparing, and supplying the Minister of Finance with, this Economic and Fiscal Update. I looked carefully at HYEFU 2023 to see whether it had changed much from PREFU 2023. Treasury macro-economists loathe getting their forecasts wrong; there would be no intention to mislead in PREFU 2023. There are also the ‘risks to the fiscal forecasts’, which take many pages in an EFU (48 pages in HYEFU 2023 compared with 19 pages of fiscal outlook).

Source: Stuff December 22, 2023 00:07 UTC