Turkey: Government’s gross debt stock totals $209B

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's Treasury and Finance Ministry announced that the government's gross debt stock was around 1.16 trillion Turkish liras (nearly $209 billion) at the end of March.

Last month's figure was up 27.3% from the same period of last year, according to the official data released on Monday.

The gross debt stock includes the outstanding debt of public sector institutions, the Central Bank, private companies, and households.

More than half of the debt stock is in local currency -- some 592.76 billion Turkish liras ($106.8 billion) -- while the rest is denominated in foreign currencies.

The country's total gross debt stock's 53.7% was domestic and 46.3% was external.

As of end of 2018, Turkish government’s gross debt stock amounted to 1.07 trillion Turkish liras ($202.5 billion).

Meanwhile, the stock of Treasury receivables stood at 18.8 billion Turkish liras ($3.4 billion) as of March 31.

Local governments with a stock of 11.86 billion Turkish liras ($2.13 billion) held the largest share of Treasury receivables.

The total amount of receivables collected by the Treasury stood at 212.6 million Turkish liras (around $38.3 million) by the end of March.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was around 5.55 as of end of March, up from around 5.27 at the end of last year.