Ukraine’s state debt decreases by $422 million thanks to the strengthening of the hryvnia
The total public debt of Ukraine guaranteed by the state decreased by 11.34 billion hryvnia ($422 million) or by 0.6% to 1.97 trillion hryvnia ($75 billion) in May 2017, thanks to the strengthening of the hryvnia. This was reported by Interfax-Ukraine, citing data from the Ministry of Finance.
Since the beginning of the year, the total national publicly guaranteed debt in hryvnia has increased by 2% or by 38.22 billion hryvnia ($1.5 billion).
In dollar terms, public debt in May increased by $130 million or 0.2%, to $74.68 billion and since the beginning of the year, its growth amounted to $3.71 billion, or 5.2%.
External debt in May increased by just $100 million up to $47.85 billion while the domestic debt decreased by 4.37 billion hryvnia ($168 million) to 687.52 billion hryvnia ($26.3 billion).
The Ministry specifies that the principal amount of the national debt is denominated in US dollars at 41.6% of the total debt and hryvnia at 30.88%, while the special drawing rights account for 19.39% and the euro accounts for 6.97%. In addition, slightly more than 1% of the national debt is denominated in Canadian dollars and yen.
The official hryvnia exchange rate, which the Ministry of Finance uses to calculate the debt, strengthened in May to 26.35 hryvnia per USD from 26.55 hryvnia per USD. By the end of 2016 it was 27.19 hryvnia to the dollar.
The law on the state budget for 2017 set the limit of the state debt at the end of 2017 to 1.72 trillion hryvnia ($65.8 billion) compared to 1.50 trillion hryvnia ($57.6 billion) at the end of 2016 in accordance with the law on the state budget of 2016.
In connection with the capitalization of PrivatBank, the Cabinet proposed raising the limit of the state debt to 1.824 trillion hryvnia ($69.96 billion).