Today, Banco de Portugal publishes statistics, in Table A.20 and A.21 of the Statistical Bulletin and in BPstat, on non-financial sector indebtedness (end-of-period positions and annual rates of change, respectively) for February 2020. Published data incorporate revisions since January 2016, in line with Banco de Portugal’s statistics revision policy.
In February 2020 non-financial sector indebtedness stood at €723.7 billion, of which €322.8 billion referred to the public sector and €400.9 billion to the private sector.
Compared with January 2020, non-financial sector indebtedness increased by €3.4 billion. This was caused by the €3.3 billion increase in public sector indebtedness and by the €0.1 billion increase in private sector indebtedness (Chart 1).
The rise in public sector indebtedness reflects an increase from all sectors, with emphasis in financing from abroad (€2.7 billion) and private individuals (€0.4 billion) (Chart 2).
As regards private sector indebtedness, there was a €0.2 billion increase in private individuals’ indebtedness to the financial sector, partly offset by a €0.1 billion reduction in corporations’ indebtedness, mainly driven by the financing from the financial sector.
In February 2020 the annual rate of change (a.r.) of private corporations’ total indebtedness was 0.4%, 0.2 percentage points (p.p.) down from the previous month. The a.r. of total households increased by 0.1 p.p., standing at 1.1%.
Next update: 21 May 2020
(1) Annual rates of change in indebtedness reflect developments in total debt (including loans, debt securities and trade credits) of the non-financial private sector to the other institutional sectors (information on a consolidated basis). Annual rates of change are calculated on the basis of an index built from derived transactions, i.e. changes in end-of-period positions excluding reclassifications, revaluations, exchange rate variations and other changes that do not arise from financial transactions.