In March 2020 non-financial sector indebtedness stood at €725.0 billion, of which €322.4 billion referred to the public sector and €402.6 billion to the private sector.
Compared with February 2020, non-financial sector indebtedness increased by €1.3 billion. This increase was due to the €1.7 billion raise in private sector indebtedness, partly offset by the €0.4 billion decrease in public sector indebtedness (Chart 1).
The decrease in public sector indebtedness was reflected in the reduction of external financing (€2.1 billion), partly offset by an increase in financing granted by the financial sector (€1.4 billion) and by corporations (€0.2 billion) (Chart 2).
Regarding private sector indebtedness, corporations’ indebtedness increased by €1.9 billion, mainly through the increase in financing granted by the financial sector. This increment was partly offset by the €0.2 billion decrease in households’ indebtedness, mostly granted by the financial sector.
In March 2020 the annual rate of change (arc) of private corporations’ total indebtedness was 0.6%, 0.2 percentage points (p.p.) more than the previous month. The annual rate of change of total households indebtedness decreased by 0.2 p.p., standing at 0.8%.
Today, Banco de Portugal starts publishing new details about the annual rates of change of non-financial sector indebtedness statistics. The press release regarding its disclosure can be accessed here.
Next update: 23 Jun. 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.