Press release No. 376 of 29 September 2020
WIESBADEN – The debt owed by the overall public budget (Federation, Länder, municipalities/associations of municipalities and social security funds including all extra budgets) to the non-public sector (credit institutions and the remaining domestic and non-domestic sector, for instance private businesses in the domestic territory and abroad) amounted to 2,108.9 billion euros at the end of the first six months of 2020. That was the highest debt ever determined for the debt statistics. The former record high of 2,068.3 billion euros was measured on 31 December 2012 after the data collection procedure had been modified as of reference year 2010. Based on provisional results, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that public debt rose by 11.1%, or 210.1 billion euros, compared with the end of 2019. The increase is mainly due to the fact that the public budgets borrowed funds for the purpose of financing measures to overcome the coronavirus crisis. Compared with the first quarter of 2020, public debt increased by 7.9% (+153.5 billion euros) in the second quarter of 2020.
Basic data and long time series are available in table debts owed to the non-public sector (71321-0005) GENESIS-Online database.
