Efforts to contain outlays in the years to come must therefore be extremely incisive: in the ten years 1999-2008 primary current expenditure recorded an average annual increase of 2.1 per cent in real terms. It should be noted that over the last decade the average growth in expenditure was 1.5 points greater than projected for the following year in the Forecasting and Planning Reports.
The corporate sector in aggregate has high reserves of cash, financial intermediaries and capital markets are willing to lend, and interest rates are low. If the nascent improvement in “confidence” we have seen can be sustained, that will help to achieve better growth.