Romania's public borrowing reaches record in January: one-third of last year's total

In January, the Romanian Government borrowed RON 28.87 bln (EUR 5.84 bln) from banks and bond investors, including two Eurobonds. The amount is a new monthly record and comes after, at the end of last year, the Ministry of Finance was forced to skip a Eurobond amid a political crisis, Profit.ro reported.

Instead of EUR 10 bln as planned, the Government raised EUR 7 bln with Eurobonds last year, which explains the repeated issues in January this year (the second round of Eurobonds is likely to be counted for the month of February, though).

In addition to the Eurobonds, another EUR 1.94 bln (RON 9.6 bln) entered the Government's accounts under the form of advance payment for the EUR 14.6 bln of loans under the Resilience Facility.

Thus, January's borrowing reaches a total of RON 38.5 bln. This amount, which includes not only bond issues and loans from international institutions (in this case, the European Commission), is also a record.

Last year's public borrowing stood at RON 104.1 bln, below the financing needs of RON 131.5 bln (revised downward from RON 136.2 bln to reflect the smaller-than-planned budget deficit of RON 80 bln compared to the RON 84.9 bln target). The RON 104 bln public borrowing in 2021 is significantly lower than the RON 167 bln in 2020 when the financing requirement was RON 149 bln.

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