Brown/PFI: Funny numbers

The UK Private Finance Initiative may be about to lose one of its two reasons for existence. That is the ability to shift some of the cost of government investment to the private sector. The Office of National Statistics has decided to count all the debt related to PFI capital expenditure as the government’s, according to the Financial Times. This would increase the total government debt by as much as £24bn, or 6%. The ONS has ruled that PFI deals transfer little financial risk to the private s...