U.S. July Budget Gap Narrows on Lower Spending, Payment Shifts
This article is for subscribers only.
The U.S. government’s budget deficit narrowed in July, as spending dropped by 11.9 percent from a year earlier and some payments were accelerated to the previous month for calendar-related reasons.
The gap shrank 46.2 percent to $69.6 billion from a $129.4 billion shortfall in July 2011, the Treasury Department said today in Washington. Last month’s gap was smaller than the projected $90 billion deficit, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. For the first 10 months of this fiscal year the deficit was 11.5 percent narrower than in the year-earlier period.