The US federal budget deficit hit a new record of US$483 billion in the 2008 fiscal year which ended on Sept. 30, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated yesterday.

The new record of budget deficit followed last year's 162-billion-dollar red ink and exceeded the previous all-time high of 413 billion dollars set in 2004.

With the economy in a slump, the CBO said Tuesday, revenues dropped by almost 2 percent in the just-completed fiscal year.

Corporate income receipts posted a big decrease of nearly 18 percent, while individual income tax revenues declined by 1.6 percent, according to the nonpartisan CBO.

The latest figures for 2008 are more than 30 billion dollars higher than the CBO's estimates issued last month and almost 50 billion dollars more than what the Bush administration predicted in July.

In the last fiscal year, the federal deficit dropped by 34.4 percent to 162 billion dollars, a five-year low since an imbalance of 159 billion dollars in 2002, reflecting faster growth in government revenues than spending.

The 2002 performance marked the first budget deficit after four consecutive years of budget surpluses.

The Bush administration has projected early this year that the government could eliminate the deficit completely and return to a surplus by 2012.

At present, however, many analysts predict that the budget deficit is likely to exceed 500 billion dollars next year as the government taps a large amount of money to deal with the most severe credit crisis in decades.