Press release No. 385 of 1 October 2020
WIESBADEN – The municipalities and associations of municipalities (excluding city states) showed a financial deficit of 9.7 billion euros in the first half of 2020. In the first half of 2019 the deficit totalled just under 0.3 billion euros. Drawing upon quarterly cash statistics, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that this development was mainly caused by high revenue shortfalls of the municipalities in the second quarter of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The result is based on municipal core and extra budgets. In the first half of 2020, the deficit of the core budgets amounted to 9.5 billion euros compared with 0.9 billion euros in the first six months of 2019. In the reference period, the extra budgets recorded a financial deficit of roughly 0.2 billion euros compared with a surplus of 0.7 billion euros in the same period a year earlier.
