Russian 2018 Public Debt to GDP Ratio among World’s Lowest
Russia has been reducing its public debt as measured against GDP, with this now standing at just 33 percent and a 7 percent decrease from last year. Net debt figure is the cumulative total of all government borrowings, less repayments that are denominated in a country’s home currency. Gross government debt is the most relevant data for discussions of government default and debt ceilings. It is different from external debt, which includes the foreign currency liabilities of non-government entities.
“As of January 1, 2018 the debt burden on the Russian economy remained moderate: the debt-to-GDP ratio amounted to 33 percent”, while a large share of Russian external debt obligations (86.5 percent of the total external debt) accounted for the private sector and totaled US$448.6 billion.
Meanwhile, the external debt of government bodies and the Central Bank reached US$70.3 billion in 2017, of which US$14.5 billion was debt belonging to the Central Bank. The repayment and servicing of the external debt of government bodies rose to US$4.4 billion. In general, the total debt increased by US$16.7 billion to US$55.6 billion, the report indicated.
“The eternal debt obligations of the Russian federal subjects have hardly changed and amounted to US$200 billion,” the report read further. Russian ruble-denominated external debt corresponds to US$137.4 billion, while the dollar-denominated portion of the debt totals US$381.4 billion.
An examination of countries and their amount of public debt can be found at Trading Economics.
“Russia has been pursuing a stringent fiscal regime this past few years”, says Chris Devonshire-Ellis of Dezan Shira & Associates. “This is a wise move. There has been some belt tightening, but otherwise the economy is set to take off from a solid platform. Russia will start to move from 2020 but the time to be in this market is now.”
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