18/7/2013: Ireland's Government Deficit & Debt Up in Q1 2013

Good news: CSO is doing its job well covering Irish Government Financial stats. Bad news: the stats aren't exactly encouraging:

I will be blogging on this later tonight, so stay tuned. But for now, the table above should do: year on year:

• Deficit is up (from EUR5.029bn to EUR5.387bn)
• General Government Debt (GGD) is up (from EUR174.15bn to EUR204.05bn)
• GGD is now in excess of 125% of GDP (few years back when I predicted it will be above that marker, there was a sound of hissing and sniggering coming from the 'outraged economists' corner of Irish academia)
• General Government Net 'Worth' is down to EUR81.13 bn. 

Small corrective bit: based on Q1 2013 GDP/GNP gap the above level of debt is at 149% of GNP.

Most of the deficit increase is accounted for by payments under the Eligible Liabilities Guarantee Scheme arising from liquidation of IBRC, and due to higher interest spending. In fact, interest spending rose by EUR543 million year-on-year, while deficit rose EUR358 million over the same period of time.