Malta was among the European Union's top performers in reducing the percentage of government debt as a ratio of its GDP in the second quarter of this year, Eurostat figures released today show. 

Malta's debt-to-GDP ratio fell by 3.8 percentage points during that period when compared to the same period in 2016 and 1.4 percentage points when compared to the first three months of 2017, reaching €5,869 million.

That figure means Malta's government debt stands at 56.8% of GDP. In the second quarter of 2016, the ratio stood at 60.6%.  

The vast majority of Malta's government debt is made up of debt securities (52.9%), 3.2% of loans and the remaining 0.7% in currency and deposits.

When comparing overall debt-to-GDP figures, Greece (175%), Italy (134.7%) and Portugal (132.1%) were EU's most indebted countries in relative terms during Q2 of 2017. Estonia (8.9%), Luxembourg (23.4%) and Bulgaria (27.7%) were the least.

The eurozone average debt-to-GDP ratio in Q2 stood at 89.1%, a minor decrease from the 89.2% figure registered in Q1.  Across the EU as a whole, the ratio fell from 83.6% to 83.4%.

While the average ratio fell across the EU, government deficits rose on average, from a 1 per cent average in Q1 to 1.2 per cent in Q2. In the EU28, the average government deficit stood at 1.3%.

Malta's 2.3% surplus in Q2 was slightly lower than the 2.7% registered in Q1 but still the highest surplus across the EU28, Eurostat figures showed.

Eurostat figures show that governments in Greece, Croatia and Germany were among the most successful at reducing their respective countries' debt-to-GDP ratio during the April - June period.

Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio fell by 4.7 percentage points when compared to the same period in 2016, while that of the Netherlands fell by 4.5 percentage points and Germany's by 3.9 percentage points.

When comparing the second quarter of 2017 to the previous three months, Croatia's 4.5 percentage point decline was the EU's best performance by some distance, eclipsing Slovaika's 1.6 and Malta's 1.4 percentage point decline.

 

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