The Main metropolis has to expect a high deficit in the current year.

This Thursday, city treasurer Bastian Bergerhoff (Die Grünen) will bring the budget to the city council - the key figures of the city's finances are, however, sobering.

Accordingly, the finance department assumes a deficit of 219.29 million euros.

Although there have also been deficits in recent years, they were significantly lower at just over 97 million euros (2021) and just under 87 million euros (2020).

The high deficit leads to a drastic reduction in the reserves used to cover the shortfall.

They drop from 275.41 million euros (2021) to just 56.12 million euros in the current year.

The plans for the coming years show that they are likely to continue to shrink: by 2024, the city treasury expects deficits totaling more than 364 million euros.

A slight surplus is not expected again until 2025.

To this end, the deficits are to be successively reduced from around 127 million euros (2023) to almost 18.5 million euros (2024).

Payments of almost 778 million euros are planned for investments in the 2022 financial budget.

Their financing should be made possible almost exclusively through borrowing.

This would greatly increase the debt level:

A budget security concept for the budget and further financial planning up to 2025 is therefore necessary, which must be submitted to the supervisory authority in Wiesbaden together with the budget.

The good development of trade tax gives hope in the difficult situation.

After a pandemic-related slump in 2020, this exceeded the previous record result in 2021 with a result of almost 2.1 billion euros.

In 2022, 2.15 billion euros can be expected.