05.05.2025
Annual Review 2024
The Austrian Treasury is pleased to present the Annual Review 2024, which includes a comprehensive overview of Austria’s borrowing activities and debt portfolio as well as key economic data, outlook for the current year and a foreword by the Federal Minister of Finance.
Highlights:
- Despite challenging market conditions, the Austrian Treasury looks back on a successful year of issuance in 2024:
- Overall, the Republic of Austria issued EUR 48.5 bn in government bonds. The outstanding volume of short-term financing was EUR 22.4 bn at the end of 2024 and therefore EUR 2.3 bn lower than in 2023 (EUR 24.7 bn as of December 31, 2023).
- The volume-weighted bid-to-cover ratio for auctions remained stable at 2.4 in 2024 (2023: 2.4), which is particularly positive outcome given the significantly higher auction volume compared to the previous year. There was a further increase in demand for syndications compared to the previous year (6.9), with an average oversubscription of 8.0 times. This solid development in a year marked by economic and political challenges underlines Austria‘s excellent standing on the money and capital markets as a safe haven in uncertain times.
- In 2024, the federal government issued a total of EUR 76.0 bn at an average interest rate of 2.86% p.a., which was below the previous year (3.30% p.a.). At 8.8 years, the average term of new issuances was well above the historic low of 7.3 years in 2023. The average remaining term of the federal government’s financial debt portfolio was 11.4 years at the end of 2024 (previous year: 11.1 years). The strategy of recent years of maintaining a relatively long residual maturity and thus limiting Austria‘s interest rate and refinancing risk has paid off in an environment of sharply rising yields. As a result, the effective interest rate of the debt portfolio increased only moderately from 1.79% p.a. in the previous year to 1.91% p.a. as of December 31, 2024.
- In 2024, the second green pillar of the financing strategy was further expanded with a total of EUR 6.2 bn new green issuance. The utilisation of all green financing instruments available enabled further diversification of the investor base. The green financing volume is expected to be more than EUR 6.0 bn in 2025 (2024: EUR 6.2 bn). Medium and long-term green financing instruments will continue to form the basis of green issuance in 2025, while short-term financing instruments will account for up to 20% of total green financing in 2025.
- In June 2024 the Austrian Treasury published the Green Investor Report 2023, the report on the allocation and the climate and environmental impact of green financing by the federal government. The report for 2024 will be published in June 2025.
- Bundesschatz, the Republic of Austria’s online investment product, has been available to private investors since April 2024. Bundesschatz are securities issued by the Republic of Austria that can be purchased directly via the Austrian Treasury and are available in various maturities ranging from one month to ten years. Two tranches (with maturities of six months and four years) are also offered as Green Bundesschatz. Bundesschatz additionally serves as an effective tool for further broadening the investor base by increasing the participation of retail investors.
- The debt ratio increased from 78.5% to 81.8% and the Maastricht deficit amounted to -4.7% in 2024. A comprehensive package of measures is intended to achieve significant savings in the budget – at least EUR 6.4 bn in 2025 and EUR 8.7 bn in 2026 – in order to ensure a reduction in the budget deficit towards the Maastricht deficit limits in the coming years.
- Funding Outlook 2025: Based on the provisional budget for 2025, we expect slightly lower financing volumes in 2025 than in 2024, with between EUR 43 bn and EUR 47 bn likely to be issued via government bonds (2024: EUR 48.5 bn). A slight increase of EUR 2 to 4 bn is planned for short-term financing instruments. After the budgetary speech of the Federal Minister of Finance on May 13, 2025 an evaluation of the funding plan will take place.