The federal government needed fewer loans than expected last year.
According to the provisional budget, the new borrowing amounts to 115.4 billion euros.
138.9 billion euros were planned.
At 481.3 billion euros, expenditure was 14.5 billion euros lower than expected.
Revenue was 9 billion euros better than assumed.
This affects the so-called core budget.
Manfred Schäfers
Business correspondent in Berlin.
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In order to cope with the effects of the Russian attack on Ukraine, the federal government had the Bundestag approve additional credit authorizations of 300 billion euros, which can be used over several years (Bundeswehr special fund, "double boom" against the energy crisis).
No money has yet flowed out of the 100 billion euro special fund, but the Ministry of Defense has concluded contracts for more than 10 billion euros.
According to the Ministry of Finance, around 30 billion euros of the 200 billion euros in the Economic Stabilization Fund were used last year.
This year, the federal government is planning new debt of 45.6 billion euros - that corresponds to what the debt rule in the Basic Law allows.
The taxpayers' association also takes state and local government loans into account in its debt clock.
He expects the national debt to increase by 118 billion euros this year.
Last year, the taxpayers' association fully recorded the 200 billion euros in debt that the federal government has budgeted for, not least for the energy price brakes in 2023 and 2024, in its debt clock.
At the end of 2022, this showed an increase of 11,240 euros every second.
Now it is being readjusted.
The debt increase every second drops to 3744 euros.
Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) gives his cabinet colleagues no hope that they will be able to receive more money than planned in the financial plan in the next few years.
On the contrary.
In his letter from last week, he warns of a turning point for the federal budget from 2024.
"It is important to arrive at an orientation of fiscal policy that does not exert any additional upward pressure on inflation and does not counteract the monetary policy of the ECB."
A continued expansive fiscal policy course in the largest economy in the euro area would make it all the more difficult for the ECB to achieve its inflation target.
"The macroeconomic environment underscores the need to scale back fiscal expansion and, as in 2023, to comply with the constitutional debt rule in the years from 2024 without using the exception clause for exceptional emergency situations." , in order to develop room for maneuver for future issues through strict re-prioritization, the FDP politician demanded.