Municipal debts rise by three billion in 2020

A total of 157.02 billion euros in debt in the Corona year. Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony and Hesse with strongest increase.

In 2020, German municipalities increased their debt by around three billion euros to a total of around 157.02 billion euros. This is the result of an evaluation by the investment tech company European Debt Solutions (EDS) of recently published figures. The Saarland was not included in the evaluation due to the lack of final figures. “Even though the figures from Saarland are not yet final, it is clear that the municipalities are not making any progress in reducing their debt,” says Peter Hoffmann, founder and Chief Technology Officer at EDS.

According to the report, the increase in municipal debt stems primarily from four federal states: Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg. “Here, the added debts of the municipalities in 2020 were significantly higher than in the previous year,” Hoffmann said. In Bavaria, the increase was around 961 million euros, in Lower Saxony around 919 million euros, followed by the municipalities in Hesse with an increase of 877 million and Baden-Württemberg with 863 million euros.

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