PRODUCT PROFILE

Latest Dublin Prices

Ireland has 4th highest debt/GDP in EU

Wednesday, October 24 12:25:42

Second quarter figures for 2012 show that Ireland had the fourth highest government debt to GDP ratio in the EU - behind Greece, Italy and Portugal, latest Eurostat figures show.

From the first to the second quarter of 2012, twenty EU Member States showed an increase in government debt to GDP and Ireland was one of these but came behind Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Slovakia and Finland.

Ireland's debt to GDP in Q2 2012 was up 10 percentage points on the same indicator for the previous year (Q2 2011), the figures show.

At the end of the second quarter of 2012, the government debt to GDP ratio in the euro area (EA17) stood at 90.0pc, compared with 88.2pc at the end of the first quarter of 2012.

In the EU27 the ratio increased from 83.5pc to 84.9pc, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, said.

Compared with the second quarter of 2011, the government debt to GDP ratio rose in both the euro area (from 87.1pc to 90.0pc) and the EU27 (from 81.4pc to 84.9pc).

At the end of the second quarter of 2012, securities other than shares accounted for 78.6pc of euro area and for 80.1pc of EU27 general government debt. Loans made up 18.6pc of euro area and 16.1pc of EU27 government debt. Currency and deposits represented 2.8pc of euro area and 3.7pc of EU27 government debt.

Due to the involvement of EU governments in financial assistance to certain Member States, and in order to obtain a more complete picture of the evolution of government debt, quarterly data on intergovernmental lending (IGL) is also published.

The share of IGL in GDP at the end of the second quarter of 2012 amounts to 1.6pc for the euro area and to 1.2pc for EU27.