Public debt drops to 107% of GDP in Q1

Public debt in the first quarter decreased to 107.0% from 107.8% in the last quarter of 2016, according to Eurostat. Meanwhile, at the end of the first quarter of 2017, the government debt to GDP ratio in the euro area (EA19) stood at 89.5%, compared with 89.2% at the end of the fourth quarter of 2016.

In the EU28, the ratio also increased from 83.6% to 84.1%. Compared with the first quarter of 2016, the government debt to GDP ratio fell in both the euro area (from 91.2% to 89.5%) and the EU28 (from 84.3% to 84.1%).The highest ratios of government debt to GDP at the end of the first quarter of 2017 were recorded in Greece (176.2%), Italy (134.7%) and Portugal (130.5%), and the lowest in Estonia (9.2%), Luxembourg (23.0%) and Bulgaria (28.6%).

Compared with the fourth quarter of 2016, 12 member states registered an increase in their debt to GDP ratio at the end of the first quarter of 2017, and fifteen a decrease.

The highest increases in the ratio were recorded in the Czech Republic (+3.1 percentage points – pp), Luxembourg (+3.0 pp), Croatia (+2.6 pp) and France (+2.3 pp). The largest decreases were recorded in Greece (-2.9 pp), the Netherlands (-2.2 pp) and Austria (-2.0 pp).

Compared with the first quarter of 2016, eight member states registered an increase in their debt to GDP ratio at the end of the first quarter of 2017, and 19 showed a decrease. The highest increases in the ratio were recorded in Latvia (+2.7 pp) and Poland (+2.2 pp), while the largest decreases were recorded in the Netherlands (-4.7 pp), Germany (-4.0 pp), Austria (-3.8 pp), Malta (-2.9 pp) and Denmark (-2.7 pp).

Eurostat also released deficit figure, that do not include Cyprus. According to that, in the first quarter of 2017, the seasonally adjusted general government deficit to GDP ratio stood at 0.9% in the euro area (EA19), a decrease compared with 1.1% in the fourth quarter of 2016.