The US budget deficit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is expected to be 333 billion dollars, a big improvement compared with the estimated shortfall a few months ago, the administration's Office of Management and Budget ( OMB) predicted Wednesday.

The revised budget gap released by the OMB was sharply narrower than the 427 billion dollars forecast by the government in February. It was also less than the record 412 billion dollars reached in the 2004 fiscal year.

According to the OMB's midsession projections, the 333-billion- dollar red ink would amount to 2.7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, down from last year's 3.6 percent.

Under the new projections, the budget deficit is set to fall to 162 billion dollars in 2009. President Bush has promised to cut the deficit gap in half of the fiscal 2004 deficit by then.

The forecast improvement was due almost entirely to an unexpectedly large tax take, with 87 billion dollars coming from better revenues and just seven billion from lower spending, OMB director Josh Bolten said.

Meanwhile, the OMB lowered its forecasts for budget gaps in the coming five years. It estimated that the government's budget shortfall over the 2006-2010 period would total 1.07 trillion dollars, down from the 1.39 trillion dollars it forecast in February.

Source: Xinhua