Developments in public debt in Spain in 2017

Abstract

This note describes the developments in Spanish general government debt in the past year, drawing on the statistics published by the Banco de España, and from a comparative standpoint with the other euro area countries. For this purpose, the second section examines how the concept of public debt – defined in accordance with the Excessive Deficit Protocol (EDP) criteria – has changed, analysing the behaviour of its determinants and its breakdown by tier of government, maturity, instrument and holder. The third section describes the main factors that have affected the deficit-debt adjustment, which reconciles general government net borrowing (deficit) to the changes in the stock of EDP debt. Lastly, the fourth section reviews the changes in 2017 in other variables related to general government, such as total liabilities, net debt, contingent liabilities and public corporations’ debt