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BERLIN (Reuters) – The heads of Germany’s coalition government have reached an agreement on how to narrow the 17 billion euro ($18.72 billion) gap in next year’s budget, government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said on Friday.
The German cabinet passed its 2025 budget in July after months of wrangling, even though the gap between projected spending and revenue was still to be covered.
At that time, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner had said the government was looking at innovative ways to reduce the shortfall to 9 billion euros.
The options under scrutiny were using extra funds from the state bank KfW and converting the grants of Germany’s national rail operator Deutsche Bahn and the highway company into loans.
The advisory board to the German Finance Ministry said those three options were problematic. Negotiations therefore had to continue for the coalition parties to find a solution.
($1 = 0.9080 euros)
(Reporting by Maria Martinez, Christian Kraemer and Holger Hansen, Editing by Rachel More)