Business leaders have warned Chancellor Gordon Brown against a “give-away” Budget on 16 March.
The CBI said that rown must not be tempted by pre-election bribes and added that stability was all-important.
Any extra money he had should be spent on improving workers’ skills, it said.
The Chancellor has been given a £2.1bn boost in his attempt to meet his golden economic rule, which allows him to borrow only for investment.
The extra leeway came after the Office for National Statistics said it had been measuring road expenditure data wrongly over the past five years.
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
CBI director general Sir Digby Jones said his message to the Chancellor was: “Please don’t give it away in any form of electioneering.
“Stability is the key word. British business needs boring stability more than anything.”