Hungary's public debt remains over 80pc of GDP

Hungary’s general government consolidated gross debt at nominal value (or called the Maastricht debt) was 80.2% of GDP at the end of the third quarter of 2013, according to financial accounts data relesead by the National Bank of Hungary. (NBH).

As the financial website portfolio.hu notes, the figures highlight a number of interesting phenomena. Although corporates have taken out a massive volume of loans, their financing capacity leaped to a never-before-seen high.

Hungary’s debt-to-GDP ratio has risen somewhat as a result of the GDP revision - and the indicator remained over 80% in Q3, too. At the same time, the ratio did drop from 81.5% at end-June and 82.8% recorded at the end of March.

The website analyst notes, however, that a comparison should be made to end-year data and at the end of 2012 the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 79.8%. So in order to have a declining debt in 2013, the NBH will need to report a 0.4 percentage point drop for the fourth quarter.

There is no info on that, yet, but in view of the clear economic policy efforts, there is a chance that the end-of-2013 debt figure will be a little bit lower than the one a year earlier.