The seasonally adjusted deficit of the public finance sector in Poland in the first quarter of 2020 amounted to 4.1 percent of GDP, Eurostat reported. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the deficit reached 1.3 percent of GDP. In other words, in the first three months Poland passed the 3% threshold, after which the EU customarily imposed the excessive deficit procedure. It is currently suspended due to a pandemic. At the end of this year, the debt may increase to several hundred billion zlotys.
The aforementioned 4.1 percent after Q1 2020 is over half of Poland's worst result in 2009-10 from the time of the country's financial collapse after the great financial crisis of 2008. We will see how many of this deficit will reach the end of this year. In turn, public debt, i.e. the most complete picture of a country's debt, calculated according to the EU methodology at the end of the first quarter of 2020, amounted to 47.9 percent of GDP against 46.0 percent GDP in Q4 2019 and against 49.1 percent GDP in Q1 2019, Eurostat reported.
This still places Poland in the group of countries with one of the lowest debts to GDP in the UE. Ten countries have lower percentages of debt from Poland: Malta, Romania, Latvia, Sweden, Lithuania, Denmark, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Estonia.