Ukraine February public debt rises 0.8% on state bank capitalization
28 March 2017
Ukraine’s public debt increased 0.8% to USD 71.8 bln in February, largely owing to UAH 16.3 bln in state bonds issued for the replenishment of statutory capital of state banks, the Finance Ministry reported on March 28. Public debt was USD 71.2 bln in the prior month.
As a result, local debt grew 2.8% (USD 0.7 bln) to USD 26.1 bln, while external debt dropped 0.4% to USD 45.6 bln on repayments of guaranteed debt to the EBRD. The share of external debt decreased slightly to 63.6% from 64.3%.
Alexander Paraschiy: The gradual increase of public debt on the back of the replenishment of banks’ statutory capital is in line with our expectations. Remarkably, UAH 3.5 bln of state bonds were allocated for the needs of Oschadbank (OSCHAD), UAH 3.0 bln to Ukreximbank (EXIMUK) and UAH 9.8 bln went to the recently nationalized Privatbank (PRBANK).
Despite the postponement of the IMF loan tranche, we still expect this year at least USD 1.0 bln from the IMF and EUR 0.6 bln from the EU, which should amount to USD 72.9 bln in public debt (75.3% of GDP in 2017) by the year end.
