The general government sector balance, the Czech Republic, 1.Q2017 – 1.Q2018

Notice: Data are not seasonally-adjusted; data cannot be compared quarter-to-quarter.

An annual increase in the positive balance was driven by increasing surpluses at the local government level (by CZK 4.5 bn to 21.1 bn) and social security funds (by CZK 3.4 bn to 3.7 bn). On the contrary, a deficit amounting to CZK 15.9 bn was observed at the central government level representing an increase in negative balance by CZK 2.2 bn in the year-on-year comparison.

In Q1 2018, the total government revenues increased by 8.2 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. The increase can be predominantly attributed to rising revenues from social contributions (11.0 percent), income taxes (6.4 percent) and taxes from production and imports (5.7 percent). The total government expenditures increased annually by 7.0 percent. The highest growth was recorded in expenditures on compensation of employees (15.5 percent), subsidies (9.1 percent) and social benefits (4.5 percent).

At the end of the Q1 2018, the government debt ratio fell annually from 39.95 to 35.82 percent of GDP. Compared to the previous quarter, the ratio grew by 1.15 pp. In the year-on-year comparison, growth in nominal GDP contributed to declining ratio by 2.34 pp. Compared to the previous quarter, growing nominal GDP reduced indebtedness ratio by
0.50 pp. An annual decline in nominal debt by CZK 91.1 bn further reduced government debt ratio by 1.79 pp. Between Q4 2017 and Q1 2018, growing nominal debt by CZK 83.8 bn increased government debt ratio by 1.65 pp.

Debt of government institutions, the Czech Republic 1.Q2017 – 1.Q2018

Quarterly growth in the nominal debt was caused mainly by growing amount of debt securities issued (+86.5 bn). On the contrary, a decrease was recorded for loans (-5.7 bn). With the share of 92.2 percent in total debt, debt securities remain the major part of the government debt.

Notices:
Indicators of government deficit and debt mentioned above are based on the methodology ESA2010 and the Manual on government deficit and debt. Quarterly indicators published in this release are methodologically consistent with the annual indicators used for the EDP purposes. 

Government surplus/deficit is represented by the item B.9 “net borrowing (-) or net lending (+)” in national accounts. It refers to the ability of general government sector to finance other sectors (+) or the need of general government sector to be financed (-) by other economic sectors. Deficit is compared with nominal GDP in given quarter. 

General government debt is defined as sum of the items Currency and deposits, Debt securities and Loans. General government debt at the end of a given quarter is compared with the sum of nominal GDP in four previous quarters.

Fiscal indicators of quarterly government deficit and debt are regularly published within the Transmission programme (table 25, table 28) on the web www.czso.cz in the section “GDP, National Accounts” (http://apl.czso.cz/pll/rocenka/rocenka.indexnu_gov?mylang=EN)

Responsible manager: Vaclav Rybacek, Ph.D., director of macroeconomic statistics section, tel.: 274 052 596, e-mail: vaclav.rybacek@czso.cz
Contact person: Jaroslav Kahoun, head of government accounts unit, tel.: 274 054 232, e-mail: jaroslav.kahoun@czso.cz
Coming News Release: 03. 10. 2018

This press release was not edited for language.