Overall, there are clearly insufficient incentives for municipalities to avoid excessive debt. This is shown not least by the fact that cash advances are often at high levels and sometimes still increasing.
While hardly any cash advances were recorded in the early 1990s, their level has since risen sharply and currently stands at over € billion, although I should add that Bavarian municipalities make scarcely any contribution to this. The steep rise in cash advances has meant that some federal states have had to set up local government debt relief and consolidation programmes.