Romania’s external debt increased moderately by 1.2% y/y to EUR 101bn , or 72% of the projected full-year GDP, the central bank announced. While the short-term debt*, the borrowing from the IMF and non-residents’ deposits have decreased visibly over the past year, the public medium/long-term indebtedness surged sharply by nearly 30% y/y to EUR 27.4bn.
Out of the total external debt, EUR 7.8bn are loans from the IMF contracted by the central bank – plus some other EUR 2.1bn borrowed by the government from the Fund. The private external debt is EUR 36.7bn – a mere 0.2% up on year.
The government has borrowed more from abroad amid lower yields. It has thus changed the structure of its total public debt over the past year in the sense of increasing the external indebtedness. Thus, out of the total public debt of EUR 51.9bn [under the ESA] at the end of March, 55.2% was external debt – up from 47.6% one year earlier. The shift was driven by the lower cost of borrowing abroad particularly last year, before the plunge in the yields paid by the Treasury on the local market this year.
* Short-term debt also includes a small share of public debt – still, only 5% of total at end-2012. Short-term public debt is also only some 3% of total public debt.
| External debt [EUR mn] | EUR mn | % y/y | EUR mn y/y |
| Medium and long-term | 80,337 | 3.9% | 2,988 |
| Public | 27,448 | 29.7% | 6,278 |
| Publicly-guaranteed | 1,376 | -5.4% | -79 |
| Private | 36,729 | 0.2% | 75 |
| Non-residents’ deposits | 6,969 | -12.5% | -992 |
| Loans from IMF | 7,815 | -22.7% | -2,295 |
| Short-Term | 20,590 | -7.8% | -1,743 |
| Total | 100,927 | 1.2% | 1,245 |
| Source: BNR |
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