Mr. John McCarthy:

The debt position is obviously very high. Reducing that will involve increases in nominal GDP - in other words, the debt ratio. Ideally, we would like to increase the denominator much more rapidly, but one can achieve that both through improvements on the real side and also on the price side. In other words, it is the nominal rate of growth. If we are getting real growth of 4.7% or 3.5%, averaging at just over 4%, and one layers in 1.5% inflation on top of that, one is looking at nominal GDP growth of the order of 5% to 5.5%. That would be sufficient to comply with the EU fiscal rules whereby we are required to reduce debt ratio at a particular rate, namely one twentieth of the difference between the current level and 60% on an annual basis. If we were to achieve 1.5% inflation, once the real growth rate is sufficiently strong, we could then comply with the debt correction rule.