The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has released its National Fiscal Outlook, which estimates that the combined net debt of Australia’s three levels of government will blow out to almost $1.3 trillion in the five years to 2024.
Federal, state and local governments are forecast to collectively spend some $327 billion on COVID-19 measures over the five-year period.
The independent budget watchdog now expects the national net operating balance across all levels of government in 2020-21 to be a deficit of 11.1% of GDP. It had previously forecast a surplus of 1.7 per cent of GDP for the current financial year.
