Italy's public debt hits record high of 126.1% of GDP

Italy's public debt reached a record high of 126.1% in relation to the country's gross domestic product (GDP), Eurostat said on Wednesday. The European Union's statistics office said the figure was up from 123.7% in the first quarter, which at the time was Italy's highest debt-to-GDP ration since it reached 120.9% in 1995. Italy's debt level was the second-highest in the EU in the second quarter after default-threatened Greece, which had a 150.3% ratio of government debt to GDP. At the end of the second quarter of 2012, the government-debt-to-GDP ratio of 17-state eurozone stood at 90.0%, compared to 88.2% for the first quarter of 2012. The ratio increased from 83.5% to 84.9% for the EU as a whole. Compared with the second quarter of 2011, the government-debt-to-GDP ratio rose in both the eurozone (from 87.1% to 90.0%) and the whole EU (from 81.4% to 84.9%).