The costs of servicing Ukraine`s public debt in 2016 amounted to UAH 95.8 billion, which is UAH 11.3 billion, or 13.4% more than in 2015 (UAH 84.5 billion), the State Treasury data at UNIAN news agency`s disposal say.
According to the report, the costs of servicing domestic public debt amounted to UAH 62.6 billion and those of servicing the external debt – to UAH 33.2 billion.
The State Treasury reports that domestic public debt repayment in 2016 amounted to UAH 111.4 billion, which is 3.7 times less than in 2015 at UAH 416.6 billion.
It also reported that government borrowing over the past year amounted to UAH 307.7 billion, which is 1.7 times less than in the previous year at UAH 514.1 billion.
The State Treasury emphasizes that debt repayment and interest payments in 2016 were carried out in a timely manner, in line with the schedule set by the Ministry of Finance.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the total amount of public and publicly guaranteed debt of Ukraine at the end of December 2016 amounted to $70.97 billion, which is 8.3%, or by $5.47 billion, more than at the beginning of the year.
Given the estimates of nominal GDP of Ukraine for 2016, released by the National Bank of Ukraine, at the level of UAH 2.358 trillion, the index of the national debt at the end of the year amounted to 81.8% of GDP.
According to expert estimates one-third of the the year`s increase was due to the nationalization of Ukraine`s biggest bank, PrivatBank, whose additional capitalization was supported by the government that had issued domestic government bonds by UAH 107 billion.
In 2015, public and publicly guaranteed debt decreased by 6.2%, to $65.488 billion, or down to UAH 1.572 trillion in the hryvnia equivalent, representing about 80% of GDP
