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HomeNewsBudget watchdog says Ontario's deficit is set to quadruple this year

Budget watchdog says Ontario’s deficit is set to quadruple this year

The Financial Accountability Office released its Economic and Business Outlook for the Spring of 2020 this morning and it projects the deficit will balloon to $41-billion in 2020-2021.

The F-A-O says the partial shutdown of the economy because of COVID-19 will deliver a significant decline in revenues and increased spending as the government deals with the fallout of the pandemic. It is expected to be the largest deficit in the province’s history.  The province’s net debt-to-GDP will also jump 10 percentage points to 49.7-percent.

The report says the economic recovery will depend on containment measures, but assuming the economy reopens slowly through the last half of this year the deficit is expected to decrease to $25.3-billion in 2021-2022, but that would still be more than double than 2019-2020.

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