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A think-tank on Rishi Sunak, one of Britain’s most senior cabinet ministers, has estimated that he has lost nearly £11bn from taxpayers to pay interest on government debt.
One of Britain’s senior-most cabinet ministers and seen as a contender for the top post, Finance Minister Rishi Sunak (Rishi Sunak) are in discussion again. A think-tank about him has estimated that he has lost about 11 billion pounds from taxpayers to pay interest on government debt. Last year the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) warned about the risk that profits made by the Bank of England (BoE) on its bond-buying incentive program could be lost if the cost of borrowing rises.
The institute said on Friday that costs are now nearly £11 billion after the BoE raised its benchmark rate from 0.1% to 1.0% between December and May, and warned of a bigger hit. As expected the rates will increase further in the coming months. Jagjit Chadha, Director, NIESR said that our calculations show the importance of managing government debt.
NIESR urges investors to convert reserves
Last year, NIESR urged the government to convert the reserves of these investors into new short and medium-day fixed interest securities, to insure against the cost of rising short-term rates. It further said that as we have argued for some time, it would have been better to first reduce the scale of short-term liabilities to reap the benefits of long-term debt issuance.
‘Proposals like risk undermine the independence of the Bank of England’
To this, the Finance Ministry hit back saying that the NIESR proposals would be extremely damaging to the credibility of the management of UK public finances. A Treasury spokesman said, “Propositions such as this risk undermining the independence of the Bank of England.” The Financial Times said the estimated cost exceeded the amount Sunak’s Conservative Party lawmakers accused former Labor finance minister and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of losing by selling gold reserves at low prices between 2003 and 2010.
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