National debt on the rise

The public debt in Poland had increased 7.1 percent, y/y, at the end of the third quarter of 2016, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Finance on Monday. Public debt had amounted to PLN 939.56 billion, an increase of PLN 62.28 million. The Ministry attributed the increase to central government spending (of PLN 3.37 billion) and Treasury debt (of PLN 2.83 billion). However, there was a decrease in the local government spending, which fell to PLN 755.9 million, a drop of 1.1 percent. The measurement of public debt in European Union states, although important according to most economic experts, does not receive as much scrutiny as measurements of national deficits-to-GDP ratios, which EU states aim to keep below 3.0 percent of GDP. The ratio of debt-to-GDP ranges from below 40 percent in some countries, including Denmark and Estonia, to over 100 percent in Spain, Belgium and Greece. The European average, at the end of the first quarter of 2016, was 91 percent. According to Statista, a research think tank which regularly measures such economic indicators, Poland’s was just above 52 percent, on a par with Slovakia.