In 2017, Social Protection remained the core expenditure function, representing 31.7 per cent of total General Government expenditure, followed by General Public Services, Health and Education.
Total General Government expenditure increased by €258.0 million over 2016, amounting to €4,031.3 million. Social protection remains the largest expenditure increase for General Government (€77.8 million), amounting to €1,278.3 million, particularly due to higher expenditure on pensions, children's allowance and child care expenditure.
This was followed by Economic affairs, which increased by €59.5 million and health expenditure, increasing by €55.0 million, mainly on account of higher spending on hospital services.
Total General Government outlay on Education increased by €18.7 million, amounting to €558.7 million.
Almost all functions of General Government expenditure registered an increase, with the exception of Defence and Housing and community amenities, registering a decrease of €5.6 million and €0.5 million respectively.
The Recreation, culture and religion expenditure function recorded the largest year-on-year growth rate (21.9 per cent), mainly due to a number of investment projects related to cultural heritage, followed by Economic affairs and Health with a growth rate of 13.1 and 9.9 per cent respectively.
On the other hand, a negative growth rate of 9.2 per cent was recorded for Defence and 1.8 per cent for Housing and community amenities.
For 2017, the total expenditure for each function as a percentage of total General Government expenditure was generally in line with previous years. The highest share of total government expenditure was devoted to Social protection (31.7 per cent).
This was followed by General Public Services (15.9 per cent), Health (15.1 per cent) and Education (13.9 per cent).
On the contrary, expenditure on Housing and community amenities had the lowest contribution to total expenditure, followed by Defence representing 0.6 per cent and 1.4 per cent respectively. Expenditure on Economic affairs as a percentage of total General Government expenditure registered the highest increase over 2016 (0.7 percentage points), whereas the share of Environment protection expenditure remained the same at 2.6 per cent.
In 2017, General Government expenditure as a percentage of GDP has decreased by 0.8 percentage points to 35.7 per cent .
Similar to the previous four years, when considering General Government data by function for 2017, a considerable share of government expenses was allocated to Compensation of employees (31.6 per cent), Social benefits and social transfers in kind (28.2 per cent) and Intermediate consumption (17.9 per cent).
The trend for 2016 remains similar for this reference year, seeing that the largest contribution of government expenditure went towards Old age (€799.9 million), mainly through pension payments, which represented 62.6 per cent of total spending on Social Protection and 19.8 per cent of total General Government expenditure.
This was followed by Hospital services (€397.9 million), which makes 65.4 per cent of total expenditure on Health and 9.9 per cent of total General Government expenditure.
Also, a considerable share of government expenditure was registered on Executive and legislative organs, financial, fiscal and external affairs (€282.7 million), followed by a total of €208.2 million on Public debt transactions.