Turkey's short-term external debt stock at $118B

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's short-term external debt stock -- debt that must be paid in the next 12 months -- reached to $118 billion at the end of January, the Turkish Central Bank said on Friday.

The figure was up 1.5 percent compared to the end of last year when the debt was some $116.3 billion, the bank said in a statement.

Nearly half the country's short-term external debt stock was in dollars -- 48.9 percent -- followed by 29.6 percent in euros, 16.1 percent in Turkish liras, and 5.4 percent in other currencies.

"In this period, banks’ short-term external debt stock increased by 1.4 percent to $57.7 billion and other sectors’ short-term external debt stock increased by 1.7 percent to $54.4 billion," it said.

The short-term debt of public sector -- mainly composed of public banks -- rose 8.7 percent from the end of 2018 to hit $24.4 billion in January.

Private sector's short-term foreign debt fell by 0.3 percent to $87.6 billion during the same period.