BERLIN (Reuters) – Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Monday he expected public debt to reach around 80% of Germany’s economic output by the end of the coronavirus crisis, the level it reached at the end of the global financial crisis.
Current finance ministry forecasts foresee public debt reaching 75% of gross domestic product by the end of 2021.
“We will probably see it (public debt) rise on the order of the increase we saw last time, so to around 80%, by the time this thing ends,” he said in a speech to a conference on business in eastern Germany.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by Thomas Seythal)
