General govt debt grows by €3b in Q1

General government EDP debt, i.e. consolidated gross debt at nominal prices amounted to EUR 184.6 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2022 and grew by EUR 3.0 billion during the quarter, according to Statistics Finland.

Relative to GDP, general government debt stood at 71.9 per cent. Correspondingly, general government debt has grown by EUR 5.1 billion compared with the respective period of the year before.

During the first quarter, central government debt grew by EUR 3.0 billion and was EUR 151.0 billion at the end of the quarter. The stock of long-term bonds grew by EUR 5.0 billion and the stock of short-term debt instruments with a maturity of under one year decreased by EUR 1.7 billion.

The stock of short-term loans remained almost on level with the previous quarter, but the methodological change made to the treatment of ARA loans raised the level of long-term loans considerably for the entire time series. Due to this change, central government's loan stock grew by EUR 9.0 billion for the last quarter of 2021.

The local government sector's debt decreased by EUR 0.1 billion and stood at EUR 32.5 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2022.

The amount of short-term debt instruments diminished by EUR 0.1 billion from the previous quarter. The time series of local government loans was also revised considerably because the treatment of housing company loans and particularly ARA loans changed in statistics compilation.

In the last quarter of 2021, local government's loan stock grew by EUR 6.3 billion due to changes. Social security funds' debt grew by EUR 0.5 billion and totalled EUR 3.2 billion at the end of the quarter. Of these, the debt stock of employment pension schemes was EUR 1.9 billion and that of other social security funds EUR 1.3 billion.