Finance Ministry expects public debt service to rise 4.4 times

The Ministry of Public Finance has revised the public debt service upwards, expecting it to reach 57.3 billion RON (13.5 billion euros) at the end of the year, up 4.4 times against 2008. At the beginning of the year, the Finance Ministry anticipated a threefold rise in the government debt, to 37.8 billion RON (8.9 billion euros), the IMF loan excluded. The biggest adjustment, by almost 20 billion RON, was operated for sums expected on the internal market. Since the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Finance has borrowed aggressively from the Romanian market, and at relatively steady costs in order to cover the needed liquidity, in the wake of a decline in revenues collected by the ministry’s budget. In the first four months of the year, the Ministry borrowed 27 billion RON (6.3 billion euros) in government bonds, with overall bonds sold since the beginning of the year amounting to almost 40 billion RON (9.4 billion euros). According to ministry estimates, the internal government debt will reach 50.7 billion RON by the end of 2009, while the external debt will total 6.6 billion RON.