Ukraine’s state debt and guaranteed debt declined by 1.3% m/m in August and reached UAH 546.3bn (USD 68.35bn), the FinMin has announced. This includes, state debt and guaranteed state foreign debt of UAH 288.2bn (52.76% of total amount of debt), down by 2.2% m/m. Domestic state and guaranteed state debt decreased by 0.2% m/m to UAH 258.9bn (47.24%). At the same time, state debt amounted to UAH 445.49bn (81.46%) as of Aug 31.

In August, Ukraine's director foreign debt decreased by 0.05% to USD 26.005bn (38.05%), while direct domestic debt decreased by 0.8% to USD 29.7bn (43.41%). Total guaranteed debt as of Aug 31, amounted to UAH 101.3bn (18.54%). This includes: guaranteed foreign debt-UAH 80.4bn (14.71%) and guaranteed domestic debt-UAH 20.9bn (3.83%).

Ukraine's gross foreign debt shrank by USD 700mn in H1 to USD 134.4bn, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has announced. The debt decreased from 76.6% to 75.7% of GDP. The NBU said that the main factor of such dynamics was a decline in the foreign liabilities of monetary and credit regulation agencies and banks, while the debt of other sectors continued to grow.

We believe that the external debt will further decrease in H2/13 due to the government’s still outstanding large total debt payments. In addition, the government’s problems with attracting foreign borrowing will also contribute to contraction of external debt, which may lower it to 73.5-74% of GDP by the end of the year.