Romania’s general government debt, reported under the ESA methodology, increased by 12.2% y/y [12.8% in euro] to RON 231.33bn [EUR 52.14bn] at the end of August, the finance ministry reported. The public debt thus accounts for 36.9% of the full-year projected GDP*, up from 35.1%** at the end of August 2012 and down from 37.9% at the end of 2012.

While external debt has increased sharply, domestic debt has on the opposite contracted over the past year. Out of the total public debt, external debt accounted for 20.3% of GDP – up from 17.2%** a year earlier and 19.3% at the end of 2012. The domestic public debt on the opposite decreased as a share of GDP to 16.6% from 17.9%** a year earlier and 18.6% at the end of 2012.

Under the national methodology, which also includes borrowing from own reserves as public debt, the stock of general government debt increased by 9.5% y/y to RON 253.7bn [40.5% of GDP]. The stock of debt denominated in local currency rose by only 4.1% y/y to RON 112.4bn, while the stock of forex denominated public debt increased sharply by 14.8% y/y [the exchange rate is calculated for debt expressed in euro] to RON 141.3bn [EUR 31.8bn] at the end of August. The share of forex denominated public debt thus increased to 55.7% of total at end-Aug from 53.4% a year earlier.

* RON 626.2bn officially, or EUR 140.7bn under our estimated year-average exchange rate of RON 4.45 against the euro.

** we recalculated ESA public debt as % of GDP based on nominal debt data released initially and latest revised GDP.