The Federal Ministry of Finance collects monthly data on expenditure, revenue and the overall balance of the core budgets of central and state government according to Section 3 (1) no. 3 of the Law on the statistics of public finance and public service personnel (“Finanz- und Personalstatistikgesetz”). In addition, the Federal Ministry of Finance provides monthly data for certain extra budgets of central government. The Federal Statistical Office estimates data on expenditure and revenue of the remaining extra budgets based on quarterly cash statistics.
Monthly data on expenditure and revenue of the core budgets of central and state government are cash-based data. Expenditure does not include repayment of credit market loans, allocations to reserves and expenditure to cover a cash deficit. Revenue does not include revenue from credit market loans, withdrawals from reserves, revenue from cash surplus and revenue from coin.
Data for the core budget of central government are published each month on the website of the Federal Ministry of Finance. The overall balance of the core budget of central government is not equal to the difference between revenue and expenditure because it also includes the balance of internal offsetting items.
Data for the core budgets of state government are published each month on the website of the Federal Ministry of Finance. Regarding the core budgets of state government, it has to be noted that the total amount does not include transfers between states (Länder) based on the fiscal equalisation mechanism (“Länderfinanzausgleich”). Other transfers between state governments are not consolidated, contrary to quarterly cash statistics.
The monthly data for the core budgets of central and state government differ from the results of quarterly cash statistics. The differences are due to corrections, delayed entries and plausibility checks made in cash statistics.
The data for extra budgets are based on different types of accounting systems. Accrual data are used for units with commercial accounting systems, otherwise the data are cash-based.
The data for core budgets and extra budgets cannot be aggregated to give a total for the subsector central government or state government because the necessary information for the consolidation of payments between core budgets and extra budgets is not available on a monthly basis.
Moreover, Germany’s share of the European Union’s budgetary operations is not shown on a monthly basis because it is neither part of the core budgets nor of the extra budgets.