Turkey's short-term foreign debt stock reaches $114.6B

ANKARA

Turkey's central bank on Friday reported that the country's short-term external debt stock amounted to $114.6 billion as of the end of November 2019.

The external debt stock -- maturing within one year or less -- increased by 1% in November, compared to the end of 2018, according to the Central Bank of Turkey (CBRT).

The currency breakdown of the debt stock composed of 50.4% U.S. dollars, 29.7% euro, 13.8% Turkish lira and 6.1% other currencies.

"Specifically, in this period, banks’ short-term external debt stock decreased by 2.4% to $55.8 billion and other sectors’ short-term external debt stock increased by 4.0% to $52.4 billion," it said.

The rest of the amount -- some $6.4 billion -- belonged to the CBRT.

From the borrowers side, the short-term debt of public sector, which consists of public banks, totaled at $21.7 billion in November last year, decreasing 3.3% from the end of previous year, while the private sector saw a 1.6% rise to reach $86.5 billion

The bank stressed that short-term foreign exchange (FX) loans of the banks received from abroad slipped 30.6% to $7.7 billion.

"FX deposits of non-residents (except banking sector) within residents banks increased by 9.5% in comparison to the end of 2018 recording $20.8 billion.

"And FX deposits of non-resident banks recorded $13.5 billion increasing by 3.8%," it noted.

The bank also said that non-residents’ Turkish lira deposits went down 2% to hit $13.8 billion in the same period.