Dutch Deficit to Widen on SNS Takeover, Dijsselbloem Says
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The budget deficit of the Netherlands, the euro area’s fifth-largest economy, will widen this year after the government decided to take control of SNS Reaal NV at a cost of 3.7 billion euros ($5.1 billion).
“This will lead to a worsening of the budget deficit” by 0.6 percentage point in 2013, Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told journalists in The Hague today. The Dutch government and the central bank said the nationalization of the bank will cost the state 2.2 billion euros in capital injections, 800 million euros to write off earlier aid and 700 million euros to separate SNS’s property-finance unit.