Press release No. 155 of 7 April 2022
WIESBADEN – The expenditure of the overall public budget rose by 5.0% to 1,762.4 billion euros in 2021 compared with 2020. Revenue increased somewhat more than expenditure over the same period, by 9.4% to 1,629.3 billion euros. This was a cash deficit - as defined in public finance statistics - of 133.2 billion euros according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). In 2020, the financial deficit amounted to 189.2 billion euros, whereas a financial surplus of 45.2 billion euros had been achieved in the pre-crisis year of 2019. The financial deficit in the overall public budget of 2021 is largely due to the financial deficit of central government, which increased slightly once again in connection with the costs of the Covid-19 pandemic. These are provisional results of the core and extra budgets of the quarterly cash statistics.
