Draft Federal Budget 2011 Defines First Consolidation Steps

After the worst phase of the financial and economic crisis has been overcome budgetary policies have to put public finances back on a sustainable path. The federal government aims at reducing the budget deficit according to the Maastricht definition below the ceiling of 3 percent of GDP from 2012 onwards. Until 2014 the Maastricht deficit is to be cut back gradually to 2.2 percent of GDP, which should stabilise the debt ratio at slightly above 72 percent of GDP. A smaller share of the increase in the debt ratio – about 2.5 percent of GDP – which is only temporary in principle is due to the government support of the banking sector as well as the bailout of Greece, which add to the overall debt level while leaving the deficit unaffected. Extra-budgetary debt of the federal, regional and local governments has to be added to official total debt: the major state-owned companies (the Austrian railway corporation ÖBB, the Austrian motorway and expressway corporation ASFINAG and the federal real estate corporation BIG) will accumulate financial liabilities of € 36 billion by 2011. The long-term liabilities of hospitals owned by the federal states added up to slightly above € 2 billion in 2009 and those of commercial companies (market producers) owned by local governments amounted to € 12.5 billion at the end of 2008. In total this is equivalent to 17 percent of GDP in 2011.