Year-on-year, debt rose eight percentage points to 79.1 percent of economic output.
The corona crisis also caused the national debt to rise significantly in the third quarter – by eight percentage points year-on-year to 79.1 percent of economic output.
This emerges from the figures that Statistics Austria published on Wednesday. The Fiscal Council most recently forecast a debt level of 84.8 percent for 2020 as a whole. The previous record (84.9 percent in 2015) is forecast to be exceeded in 2021.
For the third quarter, Statistics Austria shows a good 300 billion euros in debt to the federal, state, municipal and social security funds. Compared to the second quarter, the national debt has decreased somewhat.
However, this decline is only a “snapshot”, as Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas said in a broadcast with reference to the strong year-on-year increase.
The general government deficit was six percent of economic output in the third quarter. For comparison: from July to August 2019, the federal, state, local and social security funds still achieved a surplus of 2.1 percent of economic output (gross domestic product / GDP).
