The dynamics of the state debt since the beginning of the year (121.4 billion lei in December 2024) shows clear signs of “external improvement” against the background of linking the external debt to the exchange rate difference between foreign currencies, which is why its lei equivalent differs from the accounting one. Thus, compared to March, the total state debt increased by only 36 million lei.
In accounting units (internal in MDL, external – in $), the monthly growth of the internal state debt amounted to 4.1%, external – 3.1%. Translated into national currency at the NBM exchange rate, the total public debt increased by only 0.3%, while the external one decreased by 1.3 bln lei.
According to economist Vladimir Golovatiuc, such a tricky arithmetic was caused by the depreciation of the base currency of the external debt (US dollar) against MDL (by 4.7%).
“If the dollar exchange rate of a month ago had been maintained, the MDL equivalent of the external debt would have grown by MDL 2.3 billion in April, while the total state debt would have grown by MDL 3.7 billion. The pace of borrowing is not falling. The situation of 2024 is repeating – insignificant and time-delayed receipts of external loans and repayment of previously obtained loans exceeding them in terms of volume. For 4 months. In 4 months of 2025, $58 mln was received, and $167 mln was returned”, – the expert believes.
The piquancy of the situation is added by the fact that loans in the U.S. currency now account for less than 1% of the total debt, and newly arrived – in European currency. If we take into account that the National Bank has made the euro rather than the U.S. dollar as the base currency for calculating the MDL rate, but at the same time the dollar technically remains the currency of accounting for government debt, then European loans in the election year should also be accounted for in U.S. currency.
