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Pedestrian zone in Jena: trade tax revenues are likely to have decreased here as well during the pandemic
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Bodo Schackow / dpa
Due to the corona crisis, the public finances in 2020 showed a greater deficit than ever since reunification.
The federal, state, municipal and social security funds' cash deficit totaled 189.2 billion euros, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
"It is the first deficit since 2013 and the highest since German unification," it said.
In 2019, a surplus of 45.2 billion euros was achieved.
The expenditure grew by 12.1 percent to 1678.6 billion euros.
The increase can mainly be explained by higher allocations and grants as a result of the corona pandemic, said the statisticians.
For example, around 17.8 billion euros went from the federal government to the federal states, which are passed on to small businesses and self-employed people as corona aid - of which 14.1 billion euros are emergency aid and 3.7 billion euros are bridging aid.
Around 13 billion euros were allocated to the health fund.
From this, the health insurances received funds to finance benefits for their insured persons.
The federal government spends almost a third more
At the same time, revenue fell by 3.5 percent to 1,489.4 billion euros last year.
One of the main reasons for this was that income from taxes and tax-like charges fell by 3.8 percent to 1308.4 billion euros.
"The federal government made up for this income deficit essentially by borrowing," the statisticians explained.
The strong revenue shortfalls of the federal states and municipalities as a result of the corona pandemic were largely offset by allocations from the federal government to the federal states and from the federal states to the municipal level.
Federal spending rose particularly sharply in 2020 (+28.9 percent), followed by that of the federal states (+16.8 percent) and social security (+10.1 percent).
The expenditures of the municipalities and municipal associations rose by 5.9 percent.
The statisticians' calculations are based on preliminary results of the core and extra budgets of the federal, state, municipal and municipal associations.
The results of social security and the EU shares in the quarterly cash statistics were also included.
apr / Reuters
