Turkish Treasury to repay $10.7B debt in next 3 months

ISTANBUL

The Turkish Treasury will repay debts worth 89.9 billion Turkish liras (some $10.74 billion) in the next three months, the Treasury and Finance Ministry announced on Friday.

The Treasury will repay 12.2 billion Turkish liras ($1.46 billion) in external debts, including 5.3 billion Turkish liras ($633.29 million) in interest payments, during the November 2020-January 2021 period.

For the next three months, 77.7 billion Turkish liras ($9.3 billion) of domestic debt redemption is also projected -- with around 28 billion Turkish liras ($3.34 billion) of this amount in interest payments, while the rest is in principal payment.

According to the ministry's borrowing strategy, the Treasury will borrow 60 billion Turkish liras ($7.17 billion) from domestic markets in the next three months.

The Treasury has projected to hold 14 bond auctions and direct sale of lease certificates -- no planned external borrowing -- in the three-month period.

2021 program

The Treasury also revealed an annual program for the next year on Friday which plans to repay 547.2 billion ($65.36 billion) Turkish liras and borrow 618.6 billion ($73.9 billion).

According to the plan, the Treasury will repay 449 billion Turkish liras ($53.6 billion) domestic and 98.2 billion ($11.7 billion) Turkish liras external debt in the year, with 121.9 billion ($14.56 billion) and 40.3 billion Turkish liras ($4.8 billion) interest payments, respectively.

It also expected to borrow 541 billion Turkish liras ($64.6 billion) from domestic and 77.6 billion Turkish liras ($9.27 billion) from external markets next year.

The program showed that in 2020 the Treasury paid 363.9 billion Turkish liras ($64 billion) debt -- 79.4% of this amount was domestic payments --, and borrowed 467.8 billion Turkish liras ($82.36 billion), of which around 91% was from domestic markets.

The average US dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was 5.68 in 2019 while it was around 8.35 currently.