Each year a country may be in national deficit or surplus. National deficit either increases national debt or eventually leads to debt.
National debt of the United States
National surplus either increases or leads to ______ (what word/s goes here)?
The opposite of deficit is surplus. When I searched for "opposite of debt" or "opposite of national debt" I got the following results:
If you have debt you are the Debtor or Borrower. The opposite would be The Lender or Debt Originator.
and
The opposite of having debt is being unaccountable.
Quora answers
I have seen people suggest "credit". This makes sense to me when talking about finances of individuals or groups, but I'm not sure I've heard people talk about "national credit" in the way they talk about "national debt", and a search returns results that are quite different from what I have in mind.
In this context (ie., national spending), is there a word that suitably applies to "surplus" as "debt" applies to "deficit"?
Edit: Just in case, I'll explain further. If my country's government has zero debt and has a deficit of $2 billion, after two years the "national debt", "government debt", "public debt" or whatever you want to call it might be $4 billion. If we start with zero debt and my country's government is in surplus for two years, then we can expect roughly for it to be or have (what) after two years? I think the word "surplus" also fits in accordance with the general meaning of "surplus", but "surplus" has a specific meaning of:
2.a.an excess of government revenues over expenditures during a certain financial year
Collins Dictionary