MADRID: Spain’s budget deficit remained €61.4 billion or 5.8 percent GDP, according to a Eurostat report on Tuesday.
Cyprus reported a deficit of 8.8 percent of GDP, or about €1.5 billion. Both the United Kingdom and Croatia came after Spain for highest deficits, each amounting to 5.7 percent of GDP. Spain’s overall debt reached more than €1 trillion last year – nearly 98 percent of GDP.
Spain’s debt was not the highest by percentage of GDP, with Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus and Belgium all reporting debts of over 100 percent of GDP. A deficit is the amount a government spends more than its income within any given financial year, while debt is the total amount a government owes over time.
