The public debt of Moldova has significantly increased and reached the level of 99 billion lei, compared to 77 billion lei a year ago. These figures were presented by the Ministry of Finance. In the first four months of the current year, both domestic and external public debt increased by 4.37 billion lei in nominal value. By the end of April 2023, the balance of the public debt stood at 99.03 billion lei. Specifically, at the end of March 2023, the balance was 96.59 billion lei, while a year ago, on April 30, 2022, it was 77.17 billion lei, according to the information published on the mold-street.com website.
The largest growth was observed in the external public debt, which increased by approximately 2.52 billion lei, reaching almost 62.69 billion lei.
In dollar equivalent, the external public debt increased by around 340 million dollars since the beginning of the year, amounting to approximately 3.48 billion dollars, primarily due to the inflow of foreign capital.
According to the budget law, it is estimated that by December 31, 2023, the domestic public debt will not exceed 37.48 billion lei, while the external public debt will amount to 85.02 billion lei (equivalent to 4,141.3 million dollars).
At the same time, the nominal value of the domestic public debt increased by 1.85 billion lei, reaching over 36.34 billion lei.
According to the Ministry of Finance, changes in the domestic public debt primarily occurred due to the increased issuance of government securities on the primary market, with a nominal value of 1,920.9 million lei.
The weighted average interest rate on government securities sold at auctions during the first four months of 2023 was 12.27% (for various types of government securities: 91 days – 12.80%, 182 days – 12.15%, 364 days – 11.96%, 2 years – 15.79%, 3 years – 13.07%), which is 0.28 percentage points lower than in 2022.
It should be noted that despite the increase, the share of public debt in GDP has decreased to 32.1% compared to the level of 34.7% at the end of 2022.
Data from the trade and economic platform also show that Moldova ranks 35th out of 44 European countries in terms of the share of public debt in GDP. It ranks 8th among the ten European countries with the lowest share of public debt in GDP. Greece, Italy, Portugal, France, Belgium, Cyprus, and Montenegro are among the leaders in terms of the share of public debt exceeding 100% of GDP.
