Get the OBR monthly profiles for the public finances

Downloads (and caches) the monthly profiles workbook the OBR publishes alongside each Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The profiles apportion the full-year EFO forecast for receipts, spending, and the central government net cash requirement (CGNCR) across the twelve months of the fiscal year, so that each month's ONS/HMT public sector finances outturn can be judged against the path implied by the OBR's forecast.

Usage

get_monthly_profiles(
  sheet = c("profiles", "cgncr"),
  vintage = NULL,
  refresh = FALSE
)

Arguments

sheet: Which profile table to return. "profiles" (the default) returns the receipts and spending profiles; "cgncr" returns the central government net cash requirement breakdown.
vintage: Optional EFO vintage label such as "March 2026". If NULL (the default), uses any pin set via obr_pin() or resolves the latest live profiles workbook.
refresh: Logical. If TRUE, re-download even if a cached copy exists. Defaults to FALSE.

Value

An obr_tbl with the standard schema columns (period, period_type, series, metric_type, value, unit). Monthly rows have period_type = "month" and period in "YYYY-MM" format; each series also carries one period_type = "fiscal_year" row holding the full-year EFO forecast the profile sums to. All values are GBP billion.

Details

This is the reference point used every month in the run-up to a fiscal event ("borrowing so far this year vs the OBR profile"). The OBR itself publishes a monthly commentary against these profiles; this function provides the underlying numbers in tidy long format. Pair with monthly outturn data (e.g. from the ONS public sector finances release) to compute in-year deviations from profile.

The profiles workbook is typically published a few weeks after the EFO itself. The OBR describes the profiles as broad-brush and illustrative; see the Notes sheet of the source workbook.

Examples

# \donttest{
op <- options(obr.cache_dir = tempdir())

mp <- tryCatch(get_monthly_profiles(), error = function(e) NULL)
#> Waiting 2s for retry backoff ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■  
#> Waiting 2s for retry backoff ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■  
#> ℹ Downloading efo_monthly_profiles.xlsx from OBR...
#> ✔ Saved to cache.
if (!is.null(mp)) {
  # Monthly profile for HMRC cash receipts
  mp[mp$series == "HMRC cash receipts" & mp$period_type == "month", ]
}
#> # obr_tbl: 12 rows x 6 cols
#> # Source:       OBR EFO Monthly Profiles, March 2026
#> # URL:          https://obr.uk/download/march-2026-economic-and-fiscal-outlook-monthly-profiles/
#> # Retrieved:    2026-08-23 18:06:14 UTC
#> # File MD5:     b3f3a018bb19
#> # Package:      obr 0.6.2
#> # Note:         Monthly profiles are broad-brush and illustrative (OBR). Each series also carries a fiscal_year row with the full-year EFO forecast.
#> 
#>     period period_type             series metric_type     value   unit
#> 1  2026-04       month HMRC cash receipts       level  86.46630 gbp_bn
#> 2  2026-05       month HMRC cash receipts       level  66.05574 gbp_bn
#> 3  2026-06       month HMRC cash receipts       level  70.55856 gbp_bn
#> 4  2026-07       month HMRC cash receipts       level  95.94210 gbp_bn
#> 5  2026-08       month HMRC cash receipts       level  69.55153 gbp_bn
#> 6  2026-09       month HMRC cash receipts       level  71.70758 gbp_bn
#> 7  2026-10       month HMRC cash receipts       level  77.29618 gbp_bn
#> 8  2026-11       month HMRC cash receipts       level  69.89681 gbp_bn
#> 9  2026-12       month HMRC cash receipts       level  80.61978 gbp_bn
#> 10 2027-01       month HMRC cash receipts       level 141.06205 gbp_bn
#> # ... with 2 more rows

# CGNCR breakdown by month
cg <- tryCatch(get_monthly_profiles("cgncr"), error = function(e) NULL)
#> Waiting 2s for retry backoff ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■                 
#> Waiting 2s for retry backoff ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■  
#> ℹ Loading from cache. Use `refresh = TRUE` to re-download.

options(op)
# }