Britain's Labour government looks set on Wednesday to use its last budget before an election just weeks away to cut its estimates for borrowing.
A record budget deficit has spooked investors and become a central issue for the coming election.
Finance minister Alistair Darling has repeatedly said there will be no big giveaways and government officials have gone out of their way to dampen expectations of Easter rabbits being pulled out of a hat.
Still, with an election expected on May 6 and polls putting Labour behind the opposition Conservatives, some small concessions may be in store. A delay in a planned rise in fuel duty, for example, or more money to help people find jobs.
Darling also looks set to signal his support for a global tax on banks and announce new targets for state-owned lenders to provide much-needed credit to businesses.
"My budget will contain measures that get growth going," Darling said late on Tuesday.
But after nearly three years of constantly having to revise up borrowing projections, it looks as if he will finally be able to say the budget deficit will come in lower than expected because unemployment did not go up as much as feared.
A Reuters poll of analysts this week predicted government borrowing this fiscal year and next could be around 10 billion pounds lower in each year than predicted in December's pre-budget report.
But that would still be coming down from forecasts of above 170 billion pounds, or around a record 12 percent of gross domestic product, in both 2009/10 and 2010/11. A Reuters survey of all 16 Gilt-Edged Market Makers predicted the government would have to sell 187 billion pounds' worth of bonds in the tax year starting in April.
While Darling may claim that Labour's efforts so far have ensured that the worst recession since World War Two has now ended and without the kind of job losses seen in previous downturns, he will likely stress that the recovery is fragile.
As such, he will argue it would be wrong to cut spending now as the Conservative Party are advocating. Labour, in power since 1997, has pledged to halve the deficit over four years but has said the real fiscal tightening would only start in 2011.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, say they would start cutting the deficit earlier but have not yet spelled out how. They plan to hold an emergency budget within 50 days of taking office, if elected.
But their once-commanding opinion poll lead has shrunk in recent weeks. Most polls now point to a hung parliament where no party has a majority in parliament, a nightmare scenario for markets as it could make unpopular spending cuts much harder.
Underlining the trouble that could be in store for any government, up to a quarter of a million civil servants from across the UK will be taking part in a one-day strike on Wednesday in a dispute over cuts to redundancy pay, according to the Public and Commercial Services Union.
Prison workers, passport staff, court officials, driving test examiners, emergency services operators and security staff at the Houses of Parliament are among those likely to strike.
