TIRANA, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Albania's public debt has gone down to 66.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the middle of this year, Albanian Ministry of Finance informed Friday.
The public debt dropped by about 4.2 percentage points in the end of June, 2017 compared to the level of nearly 71 percent reported at the end of last year, official data showed.
The fall has been even beyond government's forecasts as in this year's budget the Albanian government predicted that the debt would fall to not less than 69.1 percent of GDP.
However, economic experts told local media that this ratio measured debt stock in mid-year versus total annual output.
This means that the nominal debt value will increase further during the year and its weight versus national output as well, they said.
However, based on the data of the first semester, the debt has almost 'frozen' even in absolute value.
At the end of June, Albania's public debt was 1.67 trillion leks, or about 9.3 billion U.S. dollars. Compared to the end of 2016, the public debt stock has increased by only 1 billion lek.
The freezing of debt stock is due in particular to the significant reduction of the value of foreign loans taken by the Albanian government. The total value of loans from foreign creditors has dropped to 468 billion leks, 13 billion leks less than the end of last year.
The decline of about 100 million euros in the value of external loans seems to have been the main factor that has curbed the debt in nominal terms and has reduced it substantially in real terms.
In the external debt side, the Albanian government has also benefited from the appreciation of lek in the exchange rate, which has lowered the equivalent value of debt received in euro and U.S. dollars.
Meanwhile, official statistics showed that in 2010, Albania's public debt was 715.5 billion leks or 5.65 billion U.S. dollars, which is around 58.5 percent of the GDP that year.
In 2012, the country's debt increased to 61 percent of the GDP and the figure climbed to 65.08 percent in 2013. At the end of 2014, the public debt grew to 69.17 percent.
In 2015, the country's public debt hit the highest level of over 72 percent of the GDP. In March that year, the debt exceeded the level of 1 trillion leks or 7.9 billion dollars.
The Albanian parliament has recently adopted a proposal drafted by the Ministry of Finance to cut the year-on-year public debt.
