The balance improved by €5.5 billion compared to 2010, and €3 billion with respect to the official estimates of Economic and Financial Document (update on 22 September 2011).
The annual borrowing requirement of the state sector in 2011 improved significantly not only over the previous year, but also in relation to the latest official estimates included in the Update to the Economic and Financial Document.
The borrowing requirement for 2011 amounts - with provisional figures as of 31 December 2011 - to approximately €61.5 billion, compared with €67 billion for 2010 with an improvement of about €5.5 billion. The improvement is equal to almost €8 billion when the data are reclassified to provide the same basis for comparison (i.e. excluding the financial support to Greece, which, at approximately €6 billion, was much greater in 2011 compared with the €4 billion funded in 2010) .
With respect to the most recent estimates in the Economic and Financial Document (that were based on a borrowing requirement of €64.8 billion for 2011), the actual figure reflects improvement of more than €3 billion.
The final balance was impacted by botha more favourable trend in tax revenue and the deceleration seen in some areas of spending.
The balance for the month of December 2011 is a surplus provisionally computed at more than €8 billion, or roughly €2 billion below the balance of more than €10 billion for December 2010. When the data are reclassified to provide the same basis for comparison (i.e.eliminatingthe disbursement in favour of Greece and the reduction of the percentage for prepayments of personal income taxes), the surplus for month would amount to over €12 billion.
In particular, from the standpoint of revenues, the performance for the month of December included a solid trend of tax revenues despite the deferral to 2012 of part of the prepayment of personal income taxes (17 percentage points or about €3 billion); the deferral was provided by Article 55 of Decree-Law 78/2010, as amended by 2012 Stability Law with the aim of lightening the year-end tax burden of physical person taxpayers .
From the standpoint of payments, with respect to the prior year, the balance for the month of December 2011 includes the aforementioned disbursement in favour of Greece and was in line with the forecasts. Worth noting are the limited increase in interest expenditure, transfers to the regions in line with the plans to reduce healthcare spending, and the acceleration of tax refunds.