Austrian government spending on measures to counter surging energy prices and inflation last year helped swell the budget deficit in 2022 beyond what had originally been forecast, the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The federal government's net funding balance came in at -20.8 billion euros (-$22.3 billion). The net funding balance is thus 2.3 billion euros lower than in the federal budget," it said, without expressing the deficit in so-called Maastricht terms as a percentage of gross domestic product. ($1 = 0.9331 euros) (Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Andrew Heavens)