Baku, Azerbaijan, July 9
By Fakhri Vakilov- Trend:
Specialists of the Institute of Fiscal Research under the Ministry of Finance revealed parameters of Uzbekistan’s external debt, Trend reports via Uzbek media.
Their data shows that, as of January 1, 2019, the country's foreign debt is $ 17.3 billion. Of these, $10 billion (58 percent) is a government debt; $7.2 billion is a private external debt. It was noted that more than 88.6 percent of the borrowed funds were raised for a period of more than 10 years.
Despite such a large amount of public debt, only 0.8 percent will be paid this year, which in total terms will be $143.7 million. Over the next 10 years, the amount of obligations to maturity will be $1.96 billion.
The forecasts for 2019 demonstrate that external debt service will be no more than 0.45 percent of GDP, or about 2 percent of state budget revenues.
This is a positive indicator characterizing the state of the economy. In addition, it can be firmly argued that Uzbekistan has always promptly fulfilled its debt obligations and, so far, the country has not had cases of late repayment of debts.
In 2018, the balance of current operations had a negative balance. However, the financial potential of the country allows to keep the economy at an acceptable level. The accumulated reserves of the country are sufficient to cover the negative balance of payments in the long run.
At present, the country's foreign exchange reserves amount to about $ 27 billion. Experts note that, in the medium term, it is expected to overcome the negative balance of payments by increasing exports of consumer goods, electricity and agricultural products.
---
Follow author on Twitter:@vakilovfaxri