Frequently Asked Questions

Velkamittari.fi is an independent visualization site that illustrates Finland's national debt in real time. It is not an official government website and does not represent any political party or interest group. All figures are based on open data published by the State Treasury and Statistics Finland.

The counter is a trend-based mathematical estimate, not an official second-by-second debt balance. It is based on the most recently published monthly figure from the State Treasury and the average growth rate over the past 12 months. The counter shows how much the debt has estimated grown since the latest official figure was published.

Debt data comes from the open API maintained by the State Treasury (tutkihallintoa.fi). GDP data is published by Statistics Finland (stat.fi). The site updates automatically once a month.

National debt is the total amount the Finnish government has borrowed from financial markets to cover the gap between expenditures and revenues. It consists mainly of long-term bonds and short-term financial instruments. Interest is paid on the debt, meaning a portion of tax revenue goes toward servicing it without reducing the principal.

Debt grows when government spending exceeds revenues, creating a deficit. In Finland, deficits have been driven by growing care and pension costs from an aging population, business cycles, and crises such as the financial crisis, the euro crisis, COVID-19, and the pressures from the Ukraine war. While debt can temporarily support economic growth, over the longer term it increases interest costs and narrows future policy space.

Interest expenses are the amount the government pays each year on its loans. They do not reduce the principal at all — they are purely the cost of carrying the debt. The rise in interest rates since 2022–2023 has significantly increased these costs, as new and refinanced debt is considerably more expensive than during the zero-rate era.

Debt is compared to gross domestic product, or GDP, because the amount of debt in euros alone does not tell the whole story. GDP describes the size of the national economy, so the debt-to-GDP ratio helps assess how large the debt is in relation to the country’s economic capacity. The same amount of debt may be heavy for a small economy, but more manageable for a larger one. That is why debt relative to GDP is a common measure when comparing debt levels and debt sustainability across countries and over time.

The site is fully independent and does not promote any party or interest group agenda. The goal is to present publicly available information in a clear and understandable format. The numbers speak for themselves — interpretation is the reader's responsibility.