Wind-down of troubled bank raises Austrian deficit by $4.8bn

The transfer of the troubled Austrian bank Hypo Alpe Adria to the state-owned company HETA Asset Resolution AG cost the national budget 4.86 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, Statistics Austria reported Monday.
At the presentation of the Public Finance 2014 report, Statistics Austria Director General Konrad Pesendorfer said the overall 2014 budget deficit was 2.4 percent of GDP, of which the HETA wind-down of the non-performing portion of Hypo made up 1.4 percent.
Additionally, the increase over the 1.3 percent deficit in 2013 was solely due to HETA activities, and without it the deficit in 2014 would have only been 1 percent, he said. The total deficit in absolute terms was 8.55 billion U.S. dollars.
The impact was however significantly weaker than the federal government had expected, that stood at a 2.7 percent deficit in its earlier internal estimations.
The end result also keeps it well under the 3 percent budget deficit to GDP ratio stipulated by the Maastricht criteria.