Azerbaijan’s Foreign Debt for H1 of 2016 Amounts to 20% of GDP
. As of July 1, 2016 Azerbaijan's external debt amounted to 7.6 billion dollars, according to budget documents, published on the official website of the Ministry of Finance.
According to Turan, the external debt is 20% of the GDP. The foreign debt per capita for the period amounts to 782.6 dollars.
39.2% of the attracted loans were taken under stable interest rates and 60.8% - under changing interest rates.
Under the agreements signed, 53.2% of the external debt was taken for the period up to 10 years, 41.2% - from 10 to 20 years, 5.6% - over 20 years. The draft state budget of Azerbaijan for 2017 has provided 1 billion 768.8 million AZN of external debt service, which compared to the year 2016 has decreased by 0.4% (6.3 million AZN).
The Finance Ministry ties the increase in the external debt percentage in GDP with the decrease in the dollar value of GDP and the stability of the external debt in foreign currency.
In addition, the Ministry does not rule out an increase in foreign debt due to the inability of some state-owned companies to service their external debts, as well as the continuation of measures on improvement of the International Bank of Azerbaijan owned by the state.
The documents indicated that the funding of the implementation of some large transnational projects also makes it necessary to increase the external debt.
The Finance Ministry noted that the maximum increasing level of external debt for 2017 is 500 million AZN and the limit of state guarantees is 10 billion manats. ------71D
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