UK's Sunak says optimistic much of COVID loans to firms will be repaid

British finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday that he was optimistic a lot of the emergency government-backed loans given to companies during the pandemic will be repaid.

"I remain optimistic that if we can actually drive our economic recovery forward then, we should be able to recover a lot of the loans," Sunak told Sky News.

"Are some of those loans going to be written off? Absolutely. We've been very clear we won't be able to say every single job, every single business."