National debt of Germany

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The debt clock of the Federation of Taxpayers shows its forecast of the national debt of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2006

The national debt of Germany consists of the combined debts of the federal government , states , municipalities , municipal associations , statutory social insurance and special federal assets with domestic and foreign lenders .

The "debts in the non-public sector according to financial statistics" are published as part of the debt statistics from the Federal Statistical Office and the Maastricht debt level, which is determined on the basis of the European system of national accounts by the Deutsche Bundesbank and also so-called allocation or rerouting transactions for the European Financial Stabilization Facility and the Reconstruction Loan Corporation as long-term loans.

The debt reported to Eurostat for 2018 amounted to 2069 billion euros and thus 61.9% of the gross domestic product .

The Federal Statistical Office reports a national debt of the Federal Republic of Germany of 1917 billion euros for 2018.

overview

The level of national debt depends on which types of debt and which public units are included in the analysis. Two different sets of arithmetic are used for the accounting of public budgets: the finance statistics and the national accounts (VGR). These calculators differ mainly with regard to the periodization and delimitation of the income and expenditure of the public sector:

State according to national accounts general public budget according to financial statistics
Federation, states, municipalities, municipal
associations, special-purpose associations, special funds, social insurance		 Federation, states, municipalities, municipal
associations, special-purpose associations, special funds, social insurance
Periodization after the date of origin
for. B. January income tax is posted back to December
Construction investments are taken into account according to construction progress		 Periodization according to cash effectiveness
e.g. B. January wage tax revenue remains assigned to January Construction
investments are taken into account in the year of payment
Income from the sale of participations is not taken into account Income from the sale of participations is recognized as cash

Public debt can be differentiated according to the following criteria:

  • by type of creditors: domestic creditors, foreign creditors
  • by type of debt: credit market debt, cash advances, etc. a.
  • according to the state body: federal, state, municipality, community association, social insurance, extra budget
  • According to economic definition (records income and expenditure after the occurrence of claims and liabilities and is (largely) the methodological basis for determining budget deficits and public debts according to the Maastricht Treaty and the European Stability and Growth Pact)
  • according to the delimitation of the financial statistics (records income and expenses including the special assets and social security according to their cash effectiveness and is relevant for the debt limitation according to Article 115 of the Basic Law as well as for the corresponding provisions in the constitutions of the federal states)
  • according to Maastricht criteria

National debt in Germany

About 40% of Germany is indebted to domestic creditors, and about 60% of German debt is foreign debt. Around two thirds of the domestic creditors are domestic credit institutions and one third are non-banks (insurance companies, companies, private individuals).

Economic significance of national debt

The Council of Economic Experts for the Assessment of Macroeconomic Development assumes that rising and high debt ratios - regardless of how they arose - are associated with long-term growth losses. They also burden future generations with the higher taxes required to finance debt servicing.

However, permanent national debt could be justified in connection with public investments that increase the wealth of future generations or leave future income and thus make them “richer”. The intergenerational redistribution effect of the national debt is a desired result here in order to also include the future beneficiaries of today's expenditure in the financial burden.

National debt ratios

Public debt 2000 - 2019 as% of GDP for the EU and Germany

The ratio of debt to nominal gross domestic product ( national debt ratio ) and the financing deficit ( net borrowing ) in relation to nominal gross domestic product are important indebtedness ratios that are used to determine the existence of a budget crisis or emergency.

Development of the national debt

From 1962 until 2012, with the exception of 1989, there was net new federal debt every year ; only from 1950 to 1961 was a net repayment of federal debt possible in eight years. The taxpayers' association has calculated that at the height of the financial crisis (press release January 15, 2009) , the speed of new borrowing increased almost tenfold from EUR 474 per second in 2008 to EUR 4,439 per second in 2009.

In line with the increasing debt level, the interest burden had grown over decades. The interest burden ratio (interest expenditure in% of total government expenditure) was 16.2% for the federal government in 2001; in some federal states still significantly higher. Measured against the gross domestic product , the interest burden quota is around 3%. The significant reduction in the key interest rate in the euro zone to a historically low level of 0.0% and the great demand for government bonds, which are considered a safe investment, have significantly reduced the interest rates on new issues in recent years, which is why the interest burden has declined overall. For new issues of government bonds with a one- and two-year term, Germany was able to charge negative interest rates at times .

The debt level in Germany fell for the first time in 2013, with the German government debt ratio falling from 81.0% to 78.4% of gross domestic product.

Federal and state governments into debt in the first place by at interest, for some years to negative interest rates , government bond sale. The transaction is mostly done through banks. The debts of the federal, state and local government budgets together (from 2010 including all extra budgets and debts of the German social insurance ) have developed as follows since 1950:

General government debt from 1950 to 2018
year in millions of euros
1950
  
 9,574
1951
  
 10,747
1952
  
 12,276
1953
  
 14,775
1954
  
 18,311
1955
  
 21,357
1956
  
 22,362
1957
  
 23,158
1958
  
 23,991
1959
  
 25,463
1960
  
 28,998
1961
  
 32,215
1962
  
 33,129
1963
  
 36,026
1964
  
 39,797
1965
  
 44,697
1966
  
 50.294
1967
  
 58,018
1968
  
 62.402
1969
  
 62,982
1970
  
 64.210
1971
  
 71,661
1972
  
 79,392
1973
  
 86,421
1974
  
 97,368
1975
  
 130.008
1976
  
 150.904
1977
  
 167.119
1978
  
 188,579
1979
  
 210,950
1980
  
 238,897
1981
  
 278.221
1982
  
 313,733
1983
  
 343.279
1984
  
 366,682
1985
  
 388.436
1986
  
 409,300
1987
  
 433,788
1988
  
 461.525
1989
  
 474.704
1990
  
 538.334
1991
  
 599,511
1992
  
 686.356
1993
  
 769,898
1994
  
 848.057
1995
  
 1,018,767
1996
  
 1,082,970
1997
  
 1,132,442
1998
  
 1,165,414
1999
  
 1,199,582
2000
  
 1,210,918
2001
  
 1,223,503
2002
  
 1,277,271
2003
  
 1,357,723
2004
  
 1,429,749
2005
  
 1,489,853
2006
  
 1,545,364
2007
  
 1,552,371
2008
  
 1,577,881
2009
  
 1,694,368
2010
  
 2,011,677
2011
  
 2,025,438
2012
  
 2,068,289
2013
  
 2,043,344
2014
  
 2,043,918
2015
  
 2,020,704
2016
  
 2,009,310
2017
  
 1,967,385
2018
  
 1,914,261
Data source: Federal Statistical Office: Debt of the general public budget - Fachserie 14 Reihe 5 - 2018 .

The trend shows that debt growth (i.e. the rate of change in the debt level) fluctuates strongly in some cases. It increased sharply after German reunification in 1990, and decreased from 1995 to 2000. Since 2001, however, the debt has grown more strongly again. The following table shows that government spending has been higher than government revenue for years. It should be noted here that the "new debt" often only represents the federal government's new debt. The total new debt, including the federal states and municipalities, is usually significantly higher.

year Public debt (
federal, state and local governments) in
billions of euros 		... in relation to
gross domestic product (GDP)
in% 		Gross domestic product (GDP)
in billions of euros 		National debt
per inhabitant in euros
2003 1357.7 63.2 2147.5 16,454
2004 1429.8 65.1 2195.7 17,331
2005 1489.9 67.0 2224.4 18,066
2006 1545.4 66.8 2313.9 18,761
2007 1552.4 63.9 2428.5 18,871
2008 1577.9 63.8 2473.8 19,213
2009 1694.4 71.4 2374.5 20,698
2010 2011.7 80.6 2495 24,607
2011 2025.4 77.6 2610 25,215
2012 2068.3 77.6 2666 25,685
2013 2043.7 72.5 2811 25,289
2014 2049.2 70.3 2916 25,320
Source: Monthly report of the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) from 09/21/2015

In the period from 1979 to 2010, the annual financial balance in relation to GDP was −2.7%. In this respect, even the increase from 2007 to 2010 is “in the normal range”, with an average financial balance of −2.3% and thus well below the long-term average. Most recently in the course of the bank bailout that accompanied the financial crisis from 2007 onwards , the debt level (gross) rose by almost 100 billion euros by 2009.

The federal budget was not completed between 1970 and 2014 without new borrowing.

Concealed national debt

In addition to this debt, which (from securitization rule government liabilities bunds , -schatzbriefe , municipal bonds , municipal loans , etc.), one speaks also of the implicit debt (Engl. Implicit debt ; in politics and the media also shade debt ) arising from the amount of future government obligations, such as B. Annuity and pension payments results. The calculation of implicit debt is controversial because it depends, among other things, on assumptions about the amount of the cash flow of the future interest rate structure. A change in the social security systems or the population distribution would, for example, have an impact on future payment flows and thus on their net present value . For this reason, the published figures refer to the explicit indebtedness. There are proposals to integrate implicit debt into a generational balance sheet. Hidden government debt describes a government debt in which the debtor is not the government itself, but an outsourced entity. such as B. the German Unity Fund . Even if these debts are not accounted for as debts of the state, they are economically attributable to it. Extra budgets with their claims and debts are part of the general public budget .

In the wake of the financial crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) warned of the consequences of shadow debt in the euro countries. The guarantees for other EU member states and its own banks would have increased Germany's debt by 11.2% in 2012 to a national debt ratio of around 90% of gross domestic product (GDP).

Debt of the federal states

The per capita debt of residents is highest in the three city-states. Of the large states, Saarland has the highest debt per capita, while the economically strong southern states of Bavaria , Baden-Württemberg and Saxony have less debt.

In the table below, it should be noted in the column “Change in debt per capita…” that inflation is not taken into account. Assuming annual inflation of around 2 percent, the figures given there would be more than −18 percent more negative (= cheaper).

The development of the debts of the German federal states from 2008 to 2018
state Per capita debt by year Debt
was 2,018
in total
in billion euros 		Change in the
per capita
debt
stands
2008-2018
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Baden-Württemberg 4,391 4,383   6,044   6.365   6,537   6,661   6,058   5,832   5,685   4,907   4,675   51.657 + 6.5%  
Bavaria 2,861 3,307   3,451   3,380   3,384   3,200   3,026   2,905   2,602   2,359   2,097   27,344 -26.7%  
Berlin 16,340 17,140   17,651   17,651   18,213   17,799   17,347   17,063   16,669   15,925   15,008   54,404 -8.2%  
Brandenburg 7,407 7,531   8,788   8,750   8,877   8,526   8,283   8,274   7,955   7,459   7.179   17,994 -3.1%  
Bremen 23,085 24,256   27,372   28,638   30,155   30,615   31,299   34,153   32,119   30,828   31,770   21.622 + 37.6%  
Hamburg 12,223 12,733   14,119   13,900   14,273   14,393   16,148   15,137   17,674   18.206   18,750   34.393 + 53.4%  
Hesse 6.266 6,845   8,544   9.155   9,834   9,683   10,370   10,516   9,975   9,414   8,470   52.940 + 35.2%  
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 6,887 6,892   7,426   7,382   7,591   7,399   7,340   7,518   6,519   6,093   5,791   9.321 -15.9%  
Lower Saxony 7.190 7,394   8,448   8,759   8,813   8,843   8,917   9,407   9.232   9,080   8,950   71.410 + 24.5%  
North Rhine-Westphalia 7,615 7,988   12,283   12,775   14,699   13,669   13,558   13,633   13,285   12,786   12,278   219.945 + 61.2%  
Rhineland-Palatinate 7,549 7,928   10,316   10,817   11,164   11,223   11,309   11,417   11,279   10,927   10,548   43.017 + 39.7%  
Saarland 10.112 11,270   14,257   14,948   16,077   16,860   17,647   18,463   18,014   17,715   17,449   17.313 + 72.6%  
Saxony 2,951 2,534   2,432   2,196   2,302   2,086   1,846   1,767   1,303   1,144   1,040   4,239 -64.8%  
Saxony-Anhalt 9,465 9,543   10,340   10,376   10,556   10,373   10,475   10,818   10,396   10,503   10.195   22,571 + 7.7%  
Schleswig-Holstein 8,642 9.330   10,843   11,149   11,444   11,281   11,372   11,240   11,859   11,691   12,158   35,174 + 40.7%  
Thuringia 7,797 7,960   8,401   8,438   8,498   8,819   8,682   8,335   8,542   8,452   7,962   17.082 + 2.1%  

National Debt and National Assets

The national debt in Germany is offset by considerable government assets . State assets consist of real assets ( buildings , building land , infrastructure, etc.) and monetary assets . Overall, wealth is greater than national debt. The difference is the net worth of the state. According to calculations by the DIW based on data from the Federal Statistical Office and the Deutsche Bundesbank , net assets (including net assets or equity) of less than 10% of GDP emerged towards the end of the 2010s. In 1991 the state's net worth was still 52% of GDP. In the meantime, the state's net worth has increased again from 275 billion euros in 2011 to 895 billion euros in 2018.

While total private assets in Germany more than doubled between 1992 and 2012 (from 4.6 to 10 trillion euros), state assets fell by 800 billion euros in the same period.

National Debt Limits

Legal Limits

Art. 115 Basic Law (GG) states that the newly taken out loans must not exceed the expenditure for investments. Exception: To avert a “disruption of the macroeconomic equilibrium”, higher levels of debt are also permitted.

In addition to the should be adopted before the introduction of the euro Maastricht Treaty established EU convergence criteria and since its introduction in accordance with Art. 126 of the TFEU u. a. the following criteria must be met:

  • The budget deficit must not exceed 3% of GDP.
  • The total debt cannot exceed 60% of GDP. The debts of the federal government, the states and the local authorities are added together. This counts as debt z. B. not trade debts.

These limits, known as the Maastricht criteria, have been set arbitrarily and have been exceeded several times by Germany and other countries since 2002. For the first time in five years, Germany met the requirements of the Euro Stability Pact with the 2006 national deficit. The economic upswing and higher income caused the German budget gap to shrink to 1.7% of gross domestic product after 3.2% in 2005. The 60% limit was the average debt level of the candidate countries at the time of the Maastricht negotiations (1991). An average nominal growth in social products of around 5% was assumed, i.e. 3% real growth and 2% inflation . According to this, net borrowing is likely to be only 60% of the increase in national product (i.e. 3%) if the debt level should remain the same.

In 2009, the Bundestag and Bundesrat decided to introduce a debt brake which, from 2016, prohibits the federal government from taking on new debts, except in particularly severe recessions or catastrophes, with structural deficits exceeding 0.35% of nominal gross domestic product.

Public debt versus private wealth

The public debt in Germany is offset by a much larger private net wealth, so that the national debt is relaxed from a macroeconomic point of view, but the richest ten percent of the population own almost two thirds of this wealth. The German economy has positive foreign assets on balance .

According to calculations by the DIW, private net wealth in the narrower sense of the year was 7,370 billion euros, which corresponds to 307% of GDP. Together with the rest of the net wealth, the total net wealth of households is 9,700 billion euros, 405% of GDP. In contrast, the national debt ratio (2009) at 73% of GDP (1760 billion euros) is still quite moderate. [...] Overall, the intergenerational negative impact on the overall public budget in Germany is quite relaxed from a macroeconomic point of view. The private net wealth in the narrower sense is very strongly concentrated [...] the richest ten percent own over 60% of the wealth (2007). The wealth of the richest ten percent is therefore more than three times greater than the total national debt.

Special account for repayment

The Bundeskasse Halle (Saale) has had a special account with the Bundesbank Leipzig since 2006 (IBAN DE17 8600 0000 0086 0010 30), to which citizens can transfer money under the subject "Debt repayment" without the possibility of tax deductibility. Since the account was opened, € 1,164,564.35 has been paid in (as of December 6, 2018).

literature

  • Daniel Buscher: The state in times of the financial crisis. A contribution to the reform of the German financial and budgetary regulations (federalism reform). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-13166-2 .
  • Sebastian Finsterbusch: National Debt in the Federal Republic of Germany. 1st edition. polisphere library, 2005, ISBN 3-938456-04-3 .
  • Hans-Peter Ullmann: State and Debt. Public finances in Germany since the 18th century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-36385-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Deutsche Bundesbank : The Maastricht debt: methodological basis as well as the determination and development in Germany. in monthly report April 2018, p. 59ff
  2. ↑ Deutsche Bundesbank time series BBK01.BQ9059: indebtedness according to Maastricht Treaty - Germany - State as a whole - per quarter. Deutsche Bundesbank, accessed on January 14, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Government gross debt [SDG_17_40]. Eurostat , 22 October 2019, accessed 19 December 2019 .
  4. ↑ Public debt at the end of the first half of 2019 0.1% higher than at the end of 2018. Federal Statistical Office, accessed on December 18, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Reconciliation from the debt level of financial statistics to the debt level according to the Maastricht Treaty. Federal Statistical Office, p. 13 , accessed on December 18, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Monthly report April 2006 of the Deutsche Bundesbank ( Memento of the original dated February 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (906 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesbank.de
  7. ↑ Foreign debt , accessed on April 16, 2010 ( classification of creditors ).
  8. ↑ Limiting national debt effectively - Expertise of the German Advisory Council on the Assessment of Macroeconomic Development, March 2007
  9. ↑ Conversion of the debt clock. (No longer available online.) Association of Taxpayers, January 15, 2009, archived from the original on March 2, 2009 ; Retrieved August 4, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.steuerzahler.de
  10. ↑ Current key interest rates of the central banks | ECB / FED key interest rates. In: online broker LYNX. LYNX BV Germany Branch, accessed May 4, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Bundesbank: State saves 120 billion euros through low interest rates. In: Der Spiegel . August 11, 2014, accessed January 1, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Negative interest - the federal government earns money with government bonds for the first time. In: manager magazin . July 18, 2012, accessed January 1, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Bundestag printed paper 17/1522. (PDF; 106 kB) bundestag.de, April 26, 2010, accessed on August 4, 2012 .
  14. ↑ Federal Statistical Office : "What do the statistics on the debts of the public budget describe?"
  15. ↑ Franz Schuster, Europa im Wandel , 2013, p. 89
  16. ↑ Debt of the general public budget on December 31, 2013 in the non-public sector. Federal Statistical Office, accessed on January 18, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Simone Scharfe: Debt of the general public budget on December 31, 2013. (PDF) Federal Statistical Office, accessed on February 26, 2015 .
  18. ↑ Finances and taxes: provisional debt level of the general public budget. Federal Statistical Office, June 26, 2018, accessed on August 29, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Preliminary level of debt of the general public budget - Fachserie 14 Reihe 5.2 - 4th quarter of 2018. Federal Statistical Office, March 26, 2019, accessed on April 6, 2019 .
  20. ↑ a b Stefan Bach: weekly report. (PDF; 615 kB) DIW , December 15, 2010, accessed on August 4, 2012 .
  21. ↑ Sectoral and macroeconomic balance sheets , published by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) (real assets) and Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main (financial assets), published in December 2019
  22. ↑ Thomas Öchsner: New poverty and wealth report of the federal government: rich despite the financial crisis getting richer. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. September 18, 2012, accessed January 15, 2020 .
  23. ↑ Christoph Schäfer: Donation accounts: Alms for Germany. The federal government and Thuringia have created donation accounts to reduce their debts. However, the voluntary donors do not receive a donation receipt - and no thanks either. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 17, 2012, accessed on November 24, 2017 .
  24. ↑ Debt reduction: Citizens give the state more than 600,000 euros. In: Zeit Online . December 23, 2018, accessed on December 24, 2018 (The donation amount corresponds to the sum of the two amounts mentioned in the article).