In the euro zone, the government debt rose more than 1 percent to 12.7 trillion euros ($14.3 trillion) on an annual basis in 2018, the European Union’s statistics agency said Tuesday.
The highest amount of government debt was posted by Italy and France at 2.3 trillion euros ($ 2.6 trillion each), according to data provided by Eurostat.
Other countries followed, including UK, Germany and Spain with 1.84 trillion pounds (2.1 trillion euros or 2.4 trillion dollars), 2.06 trillion euros (2.3 trillion dollars) and 1.17 trillion euros (1.3 trillion dollars) respectively.
Last year in the EU, the ratio of government debt to GDP fell by 1.7 percentage points to 80 percent, compared to 2017, according to Eurostat data. At the end of 2018, Estonia (8.4%), Luxembourg (21.4%) and Bulgaria (22.6%) recorded the lowest ratios of government debt to GDP.
Greece, Italy and Portugal recorded the highest ratios of government debt to GDP at 181.1%, 132.2% and 121.5%, respectively, at the end of 2018.
At the same time, the government deficit amounted to 99.2 billion euros (114.1 billion dollars) in the European Union, down from 154 billion euros (183.26 billion dollars) in 2017.
In 2018 the government deficit to GDP fell by 0.4 percentage points to 0.6% over the previous year. The GDP of the EU28 was about 15.9 trillion euros ($18.3 trillion) in 2018. Also, in 2018, government expenditure in the EU 28 was equivalent to 45.6% of GDP and government revenues to 45%, according to Eurostat data.
The USD / EUR price was 1.15 at the end of 2018 and 1.27 at the end of 2017. The British pound was trading at 1.15 euros near the end of 2018.
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