In the first half of 2023, Croatia was considerably below the EU and euro area averages in terms of the general government debt to GDP ratio, according toВ preliminary data released by the EU statistical office, Eurostat, on Monday.

At the end of the first half of 2023, the general government gross debt to GDP ratio in the euro area stood at 90.3%, and narrowed by 0.4 percentage points in comparison to the end of the first quarter of 2023.

In the 27-member EU, this ratio was 83.1% at the end of Q2, down by 0.3 percentage points from Q1.

“For both the euro area and the EU, the decrease in the government debt to GDP ratio is due to the fact that an increase in GDP in absolute terms outweighed the increase in government debt,” says Eurostat.

The general government gross debt to GDP ratio both in the euro area and in the EU fell by three percentage points as against the end of the first half of 2022.

Croatia on par with Germany

Roughly speaking, half of the EU member states had the general government gross debt to GDP ratio above the recommended ceiling of 60% at the end of the first half of 2023.

At the end of June, Greece had the highest ratio, with its debt 67% higher than its GDP. Italy followed with its gross government debt 42% higher than its GDP.

“The highest ratios of government debt to GDP at the end of the second quarter of 2023 were recorded in В Greece (166.5%), Italy (142.4%), France (111.9%), Spain (111.2%), Portugal (110.1%) and Belgium (106.0%), and the lowest in Estonia (18.5%), Bulgaria (21.5%), Luxembourg (28.2%), Denmark (30.2%) and Sweden (30.7%),” Eurostat said.

Croatia’s general government debt at the end of June was €47.9 billion, which was 66.5% of GDP. At the end of March, the country’s debt reached €48.41 billion, which means that the debt-to-GDP ratio was 69.1%.

In Germany this ratio at the end of June was 64.6%.

Estonia had the lowest ratio, of 18.5%.

Eighteen EU member states saw a  narrowing of this ratio from the end of Q1 to the end of Q2 of this year. Croatia was one of them, ranking second with a decrease of 2.6 percentage points, while Latvia recorded the largest decrease, of 3.5 percentage points.