At this point you might well be shaking your head in disbelief and be wondering why governments don't just create money themselves debt free? Well, that is a very good question!
A country's deficit is sometimes confused with it's debt but there are some important differences between these two terms. The deficit is the amount of money a government must borrow each year in order to pay it's bills. This figure is added to the debt which is the total amount of money a government owes. For any government to start paying off it's debt it must stop borrowing and produce a surplus rather than a deficit.