Get EFO fiscal projections (net borrowing components)

Downloads (and caches) the OBR Economic and Fiscal Outlook Detailed Forecast Tables - Aggregates file and returns the components of net borrowing (Table 6.5) in tidy long format.

Usage

get_efo_fiscal(refresh = FALSE, vintage = NULL)

Arguments

refresh: Logical. If TRUE, re-download even if a cached copy exists. Defaults to FALSE.
vintage: Optional EFO vintage label such as "October 2024". If supplied, the function downloads the file for that specific EFO. If NULL (the default), the function uses any vintage set via obr_pin(), or falls back to the latest live EFO via the dynamic URL resolver. See obr_efo_vintages() for the full list of supported vintages.

Value

An obr_tbl with the standard v0.4.0 schema (columns: period, period_type, series, metric_type, value, unit):

period: Fiscal year being forecast, e.g. "2025-26" (character)
period_type: Always "fiscal_year" for this function (character)
series: Component name, e.g. "Net borrowing" (character)
metric_type: Always "level" for this function (character)
value: Projected value (numeric)
unit: Always "gbp_bn" for this function (character)

Details

Covers the five-year forecast horizon published at the most recent fiscal event. Key series include current receipts, current expenditure, depreciation, net investment, and net borrowing (PSNB). The exact vintage is recorded in the returned object's provenance attribute and visible in the printed header.

Examples

# \donttest{
op <- options(obr.cache_dir = tempdir())
try({
  efo <- get_efo_fiscal()
  efo[efo$series == "Net borrowing", ]
  obr_provenance(efo)$vintage

  # Pin to a specific EFO for reproducibility
  october_2024 <- get_efo_fiscal(vintage = "October 2024")
})
#> ℹ Downloading efo_aggregates.xlsx from OBR...
#> ✔ Saved to cache.
#> ℹ Downloading efo_aggregates_october_2024.xlsx from OBR...
#> ✔ Saved to cache.
options(op)
# }