Hungary’s state debt, including Eximbank, reaches 73.6pc of GDP at end-2017

Hungary’s gross consolidated state debt, calculated according to Maastricht rules and including the liabilities of state-owned Magyar Eximbank, stood at 73.6 percent of GDP at the end of 2017, down from 76 percent at the end of 2016, preliminary data released by the National Bank of Hungary (NBH) on Tuesday show.

Excluding Magyar Eximbank, the debt was 71.7 percent of GDP, down from 73.9 percent a year earlier.

The NBH recently started publishing separate state debt ratios, with and without the balance sheet of Magyar Eximbank, in line with a decision by Eurostat.

Eurostat has for years maintained that Magyar Eximbank should be reclassified inside the state budget, which would raise state debt.

The net budget financing requirement, which is a good approximation of the budget deficit, was 721 billion forints (EUR 2.3bn) in 2017, equivalent to 1.9 percent of GDP, the NBH data show. The net financing requirement rose from 1.7 percent of GDP in 2016.

Source: MTI