Bill English with an early copy of The Budget. Pic: NZPA

By Ian Llewellyn of NZPA

Wellington, May 26 NZPA - Nine years of budgets printed in red covers with surpluses and black ink inside will come an end this Thursday.

Finance Minister Bill English's first budget will return to a shade of National's blue, but inside it will be dripping with red ink as he tries to tackle deficits and rising government debt.

Mr English watched today his first fiscal masterplan roll off the printing press and said he was glad to be doing the work despite the tough economic circumstances.

"As long as it is blue, I am not worried about what shade... hopefully next year we can lighten it up a bit," Mr English said.

This year the print run had also been cut down from 10,000 to 2800.

`So the budget is on a tight budget".

The falling numbers were due to less demand and greater electronic availability of the budget documents.

Mr English said that he had noticed a few words in the wrong place in the budget, but nothing more serious.

"The decimal points are in the right places and there won't be anyone finding a lot of money in their bank account after this budget."

NZPA