UK debt ratio to rise this year, breaks Osborne target

British net public debt will rise this year as a share of economic output, Chancellor George Osborne said as he missed his commitment for the ratio to fall each year until at least 2020. Osborne told parliament that debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, would stand at 82.6 percent in the 2016/17 financial year, falling to 77.2 percent by 2019/20. Osborne also said the government was still on track to achieve a goal of reaching an outright budget surplus by 2019/20 and that borrowing f