Foreign debt exceeds 24bn euros in 2005

Medium and long-term foreign debt reached 24.4 billion euros at the end of last year, which has grown by 33% to December 2004. The share of the public and of the publicly guaranteed debt included in this total, continued to fall, standing at a little over 46%, or 11.3 billion euros. Compared with the same period of 2004, the share dropped by over eight percentage points. Public debt reached almost 7 billion euros at the end of 2005, almost 10% more than at the end of 2004. The foreign non-publicly guaranteed debt totalled 12.1 billion euros, a 54% growth compared to December 2004. This growth came in the context of an increase in the private foreign debt, which reached 11.7 billion euros, thus accounting for about half of Romania”s total debt. ZF