Croatia and 13 more European Union member-states registered a government budget surplus in 2018, according to data provided the European Union's statistical office Eurostat on Monday.

Croatia recorded a consolidated general government budget surplus of HRK 992 million in 2018, which is 0.3% of GDP. This was the second year in a row that a budget surplus was generated, while the public debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was reduced to 74.8%, according to revised figures released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics (DZS).

Apart from Croatia, the other 13 countries with a government surplus in 2018 are Luxembourg (+2.7%), Germany and Malta (both +1.9%), Bulgaria (+1.8%), the Netherlands (+1.5%), Czechia (+1.1%), Greece (+1.0%), Denmark, Slovenia and Sweden (all +0.8%), Lithuania (+0.6%), Austria (+0.2%) and Ireland (+0.1%).

“Two Member States had deficits equal to or higher than 3% of GDP: Romania (-3.0%) and Cyprus (-4.4%),” Eurostat reported.

“In 2018, the government deficit and debt of both the euro area (EA19) and the EU28 decreased in relative terms compared with 2017. In the euro area the government deficit to GDP ratio fell from 0.9% in 2017 to 0.5% in 2018, and in the EU28 from 1.0% to 0.7%,” Eurostat reported, adding that in the euro area the government debt to GDP ratio declined from 87.8% at the end of 2017 to 85.9% at the end of 2018, and in the EU28 from 82.1% to 80.4%.

Half of EU members with debt to GDP ratio above 60%

Measured by percentage of GDP, Croatia’s public debt in 2018 was 74.8%. Thus, Croatia was among the half of the EU member-states whose public debt exceeded the government debt to GDP ratio of 60%, as required by the Maastricht criteria.

The highest public debt was in Greece, 181.2% of its GDP, while the lowest, 8.4% was in Estonia.