Gross debt

This concept does not include government assets. The debt in the terms of the European Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is a consolidated gross debt, meaning that it does not take into account either public assets or debts between public administrations. To take the example of a household of several people, the household’s debt, as understood in SGP terms, would be the sum of the total debt of those people but would not count any sums that they might have lent one another. Nor would the debt be reduced by the value of goods that belonged to the household, such as their car or their house.