Public sector net borrowing hit £7.8 billion during the month, The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures have shown.
That was £8.4 billion less than a year earlier and the lowest in any December since 2019. Experts had expected it to reach £11.4 billion.
Following changes to the way students repaid their student loan, the Government thought it would get about £10 billion more from people repaying their loans.
The interest that the Government paid on loans was £4 billion in December 2023, which is £14.1 billion less than a year earlier. That is largely because inflation – as measured by the Retail Prices Index – has dropped from its peak.
Total net debt was £2.69 trillion at the end of the year, which is around 97.7 percent of the size of the economy, or gross domestic product (GDP).
