FRANKFURT, Feb 23: Germany ran up a record surplus in its public finances in 2015, with Europe's biggest economy showing "solid and consistent" growth last year, the federal statistics office said on Tuesday.
Germany notched up an overall surplus of 19.4 billion euros ($21 billion) on its public budgets last year, "which in absolute terms is the highest since unification" in 1990, the office said in a statement.
Measured against gross domestic product (GDP), the surplus amounted to 0.6 per cent of overall output, the statisticians calculated. In 2014, Germany had achieved a surplus of 8.9 billion euros or 0.3 per cent of GDP.
Under eurozone rules, member states are not allowed to run up deficits in excess of 3.0 per cent of GDP and are obliged to bring them into balance or surplus in the medium term. Last year was the second year in a row that Germany's public finances have been firmly in the black.    ?AFP