Ukraine’s Finance Ministry says the country’s public debt rose by a billion dollars in August to nearly $134 billion.
At the same time, at the end of August, the ministry claimed that Ukraine’s state debt exceeded 132bn dollars. However, for the month of June it increased by 4 billion.
“During August, the amount of state and state-guaranteed debt of Ukraine increased in dollar equivalent by 1.01 billion dollars. As of 31 August 2023, Ukraine’s public and state-guaranteed debt was $133.93 billion,” the Finance Ministry’s website notes.
The ministry claims that Ukraine’s external debt accounts for almost 70 per cent of the total amount. Earlier, the Ministry of Finance of the country noted that the draft budget for next year provides for an increase in public debt to 8.18 trillion hryvnia ($221.5 billion) or up to 104.6 per cent of GDP.
Earlier, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Azarov said that Ukraine’s public debt might reach an unprecedented 173bn dollars by the end of the year. He specified that most of the Western aid was loans that would have to be repaid sooner or later. The politician explained that Ukraine’s state budget was formed on the basis of Western aid, which allows the debt to be considered as 120 per cent of GDP. At the same time, as Azarov suggested, if we take into account “purely our revenues”, the share of debt will rise to 300 per cent.