Ukraine’s gross foreign debt as of October 1, 2019 reached $119.95 billion, which is $4.44 billion or 3.8% more than in a quarter earlier, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has reported. According to the central bank, as for GDP the debt fell from 83.5% to 82.3% of GDP.
The NBU recalled that at the beginning of this year, gross external debt amounted to $114.71 billion, or 87.8% of GDP.
“The growth of external debt [in the third quarter] was mainly due to an increase in the external liabilities of the private sector of the economy, which grew by $4.4 billion, to $69.7 billion, or 47.8% of GDP,” the regulator said.
The NBU said that the volume of public sector debt to nonresidents in July-September remained virtually unchanged and remained at the level of $50.2 billion (34.4% of GDP). In particular, the external liabilities of the general government sector increased by $0.4 billion, to $43.0 billion (29.5% of GDP). The main reason was the active purchase of government bonds by nonresidents, the obligations on which increased by $1.8 billion.
At the same time, $0.7 billion on 2015 eurobonds were repaid, and another $0.4 billion was the net repayment on direct government loans, including $0.33 billion under the Stand-By Arrangement and Extended Fund Facility (EFF) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Due to exchange rate changes, the volume of external obligations on government loans decreased $0.3 billion, while on debt securities denominated in hryvnia, it grew by $0.1 billion, the NBU said.
According to the data, the external debt of the central bank decreased by $375 million as a result of planned depreciation of payments on Stand-By loans and as of September 30, 2019 the debt amounted to $7.2 billion.
The volume of external debt of banks decreased in the third quarter by $0.1 billion to $4.9 billion, while the volume of external debt of other sectors of the economy increased by $4.1 billion, to $54.7 billion. This was due to the placement of $1.8 billion eurobonds, an increase in obligations on non-guaranteed loans and borrowings by $0.5 billion and an increase in obligations on trade loans by $1.9 billion.
Intercompany debt of enterprises in direct investment relations increased by $ 0.4 billion to $ 10.2 billion.
Overdue debt on non-guaranteed loans in the real economic sector (including from direct investors) decreased $0.5 billion during the quarter and amounted to $21.5 billion (14.8% of GDP) at the end of the third quarter of 2019.
The National Bank said that as of the end of September, the U.S. dollar remained the main currency of external borrowing of Ukraine with the share of 68%, however its share decreased 1.6 percentage points.
The share of liabilities in SDRs to the IMF also decreased, from 10.3% to 9.3%, while the share of borrowings in euros increased from 14.9% to 16%, and in hryvnia – from 2.7% to 4.2% The volume of liabilities in Russian rubles during the quarter remained virtually unchanged and amounted to 1.7% of the volume of external liabilities.
The volume of short-term external debt with a residual maturity increased by $2.8 billion and amounted to $48.9 billion as of September 30, 2019, the regulator said. The NBU said that the liabilities of the public sector (government and central bank), which should be repaid over the next 12 months, increased by $1.1 billion, to $5.9 billion mainly due to future payments on debt securities, then short-term liabilities of banking sectors fell $0.1 billion, to $1.2 billion
The total volume of real economic sector liabilities to be repaid over the next 12 months (together with intercompany debt) increased $1.6 billion, to $40.3 billion as a result of an increase in debt on short-term trade loans by $2.1 billion, to $16.6 billion.
