Estonia's government sector has registered a budget surplus for the second year on a row, with revenue passing expenditures by 163.9 million euros in 2011, according to preliminary data from Statistics Estonia.

The result puts the general government surplus at 1 percent, which not only beats the prior year's 0.2 percent surplus, it also bucks the Ministry of Finance's predictions from a year ago of a 0.4 percent deficit for the period.

As late as last September, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip had said that a 2011 surplus was unlikely and that a 2.1 percent deficit for 2012 was unavoidable. Backing up the prediction, Ansip pointed to increased spending on second-pillar pension payments and the fact that the sale of carbon emissions quotas, which had boosted past surpluses, are no longer possible.

Last year's surplus mainly came from a 147.7 million euro surplus in Social Security funds, a growth of 79 percent compared to 2010.

Local governments accounted for another 16.9 million euros of the surplus while the central government itself came in with a tiny deficit of 0.7 million euros - not as impressive, but still far better than the 77.6 million euro deficit it racked up the year prior.

The figures also showed that the government debt level relative to GDP is holding at 6 percent, among the lowest in the world.