The total debt of the Romanian state has exceeded 20 billion euros for the first time ever, but registered the lowest level of the past few years in terms of percentage of the gross domestic product - 16.4% of GDP.
Total public debt increased by 2.2 billion euros during the first six months of the year, according to data published by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF). Public debt includes both the state's foreign debt (direct and guaranteed) and various types of loans from the domestic market.
Public debt has seen a constant increase over the last 4 years, after a slight reduction in 2003.
The Romanian state now has a debt up by 8.1 billion euros against the end of 2003 (a 65% increase).
The current level of public debt, 16.4% of the GDP, places Romania among the states with the lowest public indebtedness level for the entire EU. Last year, according to Eurostat (the EU statistics office), only Luxembourg and the Baltic countries registered lower public indebtedness levels than Romania. For EU states, the average indebtedness level stands at 60-62%. In order to adopt the euro, Romania's public debt must be at a level of less than 60% of the GDP, a condition it easily meets.
At the beginning of the year, the MEF resumed the issue of T-bills, after a more than yearlong break, during which the state was not present on the domestic financing market, or international markets. In fact, funds attracted from the domestic market, through the issuing of such instruments, proved to be the catalyst behind the increase in public debt for the first half of this year.
According to MEF data, the Public Treasury attracted just over 6 billion RON (1.8 billion euros) from the interbank market in the first half of 2007, via the sale of T-bills and state bonds.
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