June deficit was 8.54%

From time to time I write about politics in Spain in general and in particular Spanish deficit. Sometimes I try to do some simple estimations and comments.

More recently there has been some comments in Spain regarding the publication of regions’ budget deficit up to second quarter. But I don’t really understand why people insist to pay attention to quarterly data without reference to a twelve month period. Let’s do the math.

First deficit: It seems that, if we leave out the help to the financial institutions, deficit in 1Q2012 and 2Q12 has been 39815 million euro. Deficit in 3Q2011 and 4Q2011 was:-16.616-34.054 = 50670 million euro. So, twelve month period ending on June 30th: 90485 million euro.

Then GDP: According to INE, GDP for 3Q2011,4Q2011,1Q2012,2Q2012: 255367 + 275032 + 259198 + 269739: Total: 1059336 million euro. Now let’s divide both. 90485/1059336.

Deficit in terms of GDP at June 30th using public data: 8,54%

Daniel Lacalle says it’s 8,56%. Surely I missed something. But not too much.<