Slovenia's government debt amounted to 71% of GDP in the third quarter of 2018, decreasing by 1.6 percentage points from the quarter before and by eight points from the third quarter of 2017.

The government debt to GDP ratio also fell in the euro area and in the EU, to 86.1% and 80.8%, respectively, which means a quarterly decline of 0.2 percentage points in both cases.

The year-on-year drop in debt was 2.1% in the euro area and 1.8% in the EU28.

The highest debt to GDP ratio was recorded in Greece (182.2%), Italy (133.0%) and Portugal (125.0%), and the lowest in Estonia (8.0%), Luxembourg (21.7%) and Bulgaria (23.1%).

General government deficit in the euro area stood at 0.5% of GDP, down from 0.3% in the second quarter. In the EU the figure rose from 0.4% to 0.6% of GDP.

Slovenia recorded a surplus of 0.4% of GDP after it stood at 0.8% of GDP in the previous quarter.