Alistair Darling won welcome respite this morning from the deluge of bleak news on the economy as official figures confirmed that he met his revised government borrowing target for the full 2007-08 financial year.

The public finances sank deeper into the red in March than for the same month last year, but that did not prevent the Chancellor beating his forecasts, with net borrowing for 2007-08 totalling £35.556 billion — just below Mr Darling’s £36.4 billion projection in the March Budget.

Borrowing for the financial year remained £2 billion higher than the Budget forecast made by Gordon Brown a year earlier.

Economists sounded warnings that Mr Darling’s forecasts for borrowing in the new financial year, 2008-09, of £43 billion, already revised up from the £30 billion expected by Gordon Brown a year ago, probably remained too optimistic if the economy slowed as sharply as anticipated.

The March figures for the last month of the previous financial year showed that the Treasury was still in deficit on its preferred net borrowing measure to the tune of £10.2 billion last month — the worst figure for any March and well above City forecasts for an £8 billion monthly total.

The Treasury’s favoured figures make adjustments for payments still to flow in and out of its coffers. On a purely cash basis, last month saw it suffer a financial shortfall of £12.66 billion, slightly lower than City forecasts for this net cash requirement.

The full-year figures were flattered, meanwhile, by revisions to earlier months, with February’s shortfall revised down by £2.4 billion to only £0.2 billion.

On the current budget, which covers all day-to-day, non-investment spending by the Government and is used to gauge the Chancellor’s “golden rule” for the public finances, the Treasury was in the red last month by £3.6 billion — sharply up from the £1.3 billion deficit in March 2007.

That took the current budget deficit for the full 2007-08 financial year to £7.6 billion, slightly lower than Mr Darling’s £7.9 billion.

Again, however, economists cautioned that the Chancellor could struggle to meet the golden rule, and his second rule capping public debt at 40 per cent of GDP, if strains on the public finances continue to intensify as the economy weakens.

Today’s official figures showed that net debt over 2007-08 rose to £527.7 billion, from £499.5 billion in March last year, leaving it at 36.7 per cent of GDP, up from 36.6 per cent.

But the scheduled addition of Northern Rock’s debts to the figures next month after the Government’s takeover of the stricken lender will add another £100 billion to the national debt, leaving the Chancellor above his 40 per cent ceiling, at least temporarily.

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