Reuters reports that the Statistics Office said that Germany's public sector deficit reached 189.2 billion euros in 2020 thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the first deficit since 2013 and the highest budget shortfall since German reunification three decades ago.

The pandemic has devastated Europe's largest economy, even though it has proven more resilient than many expected, partly because of continuing strong export demand from China.

The statistics office said that public spending rose 12.1% to 1.7 trillion euros as the government pulled out all the stops to offset the impact of months of lockdown, while tax take fell 3.5% to 1.5 trillion euros.