Govt debt grows by €8.6b in Q2

The general government EDP debt, i.e., consolidated gross debt at nominal prices amounted to EUR 163.4 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2020, posting a growth of EUR 8.6 billion during the quarter, according to the Statistics Finland.

Relative to GDP, general government debt stood at 68.6 per cent. Correspondingly, general government debt has grown by EUR 17.7 billion compared with that in the corresponding period of the year before.

During the March-June period, central government debt grew by EUR 6.3 billion, standing at EUR 135.0 billion at the end of the quarter.

The number of short-term debt instruments with a maturity of under one year grew by EUR 2.3 billion and the stock of other bonds by EUR 4.5 billion. The stock of long-term loans went down by EUR 0.1 billion and the stock of short-term loans fell by EUR 0.4 billion.

The local government sector’s debt grew by EUR 0.7 billion and totalled EUR 26.1 billion at the end of the quarter.

The number of debt instruments fell by EUR 0.8 billion and the loan stock grew by EUR 1.5 billion. Social security funds’ debt grew by EUR 1.6 billion and totalled EUR 3.6 billion at the end of the quarter. Of them, employment pension schemes’ debt grew by EUR 0.3 billion due to cash collateral received in connection with derivative contracts and securities lending. The debt of other social security funds grew by EUR 1.2 billion due to the growth in the stock of debt securities.

General government EDP debt describes general government’s debt to other sectors of the national economy and to the rest of the world, and its development is influenced by changes in unconsolidated debt and internal general government debts.

Consolidated general government gross debt is derived by deducting debts between units recorded under general government from unconsolidated gross debt. For this reason, general government debt is smaller than the combined debts of its sub-sectors. The debt-to-GDP ratio has been calculated using a seasonally and working day-adjusted GDP series at market prices.