Reading Paris's finances: the no-jargon guide

Paris publishes its finances as Open Data. The main file is called comptes-administratifs-budgets-principaux-m57-ville.csv. Thousands of rows, codes like "Chapitre 012", columns of figures. This guide explains how to read it.

Two documents, two questions

Public finances rest on two documents:

• The Budget answers: how much money came in and went out this year? It is a flow.
• The Balance sheet answers: what does the city own and what does it owe? It is a snapshot at 31 December.

The Budget: inflows, outflows

The budget is split into two ring-fenced sections.

Operating — day-to-day

What keeps the city running day to day. In 2024 (administrative account): €9.38 billion in recorded spending.

Spending: staff salaries (the largest item), electricity, school canteens, grants to associations. Revenues: property tax, parking, State allocations.

A fundamental rule: operating revenues must exceed operating spending. The surplus is called gross savings. It is what allows the city to repay debt and finance projects. If gross savings are negative, the city is living beyond its current means.

Investment — projects

What builds the city of tomorrow. Schools, renovations, parks, networks.

Spending: construction, renovation, equipment. Revenues: gross savings (transferred from operating), capital grants, borrowing.

This is where debt is contracted. That is normal: you borrow to build, not to pay salaries. The useful question is not "is there debt?" but "what did it allow to be built?".

The pitfall of "internal" accounting entries

In the raw files, some lines are internal accounting entries. The money does not leave city hall — it moves from one box to another. Those lines are flagged "Pour Ordre" in the type_operation column.

If you sum all rows without filtering, you get a budget twice as large as reality. Nothing in the file warns you.

What to do: keep only the rows where type_operation = "Réel".

Voted vs executed

Two versions of the budget exist:

• The Initial Budget (Budget Primitif, BP): the forecast voted at the start of the year by the Conseil de Paris. It is a political promise.
• The Administrative Account (Compte Administratif, CA): reality recorded at year-end. It is the bill.

Comparing the two reveals gaps between what was announced and what was done. A line item executed at 60% of the voted amount raises questions. So does one executed at 140%.

On the Open Data portal, these two documents are in separate files with different formats. We link them line by line on the dashboard.

The balance sheet: what Paris owns and what it owes

The balance sheet is a snapshot at 31 December. Two columns, always equal.

Assets — what the city owns

Land, buildings (schools, town halls, gyms, swimming pools), networks (streets, sewers, lighting), equipment. The physical heritage accumulated over decades.

We often talk about debt. We forget to look at what it has financed.

Liabilities — how it is funded

• Equity: money the city has saved or received definitively. Usually the largest share.
• Financial debt: bank loans.

High debt against an immense, well-maintained asset base is an investment. High debt against a deteriorating asset base is a problem. The balance sheet lets you tell the difference.

Glossary

What the dashboard shows

Each dashboard visualisation answers a question:

The figures shown are the actual flows from the Administrative Account, unless stated otherwise. Where a figure is estimated rather than recorded, it is flagged.

Sources

All data come from the Open Data Paris portal and the official budget annexes of the Ville de Paris. The processing pipeline is open-source and auditable on GitHub.