Over the past 3-4 years, Azerbaijan has reduced the share of foreign currency in the external public debt from 95% to 81%, Director of the Agency for Public Debt and Financial Liability Management under the Ministry of Finance Azer Mursagulov said, Report informs.
“One of the risk criteria associated with the management of Azerbaijan’s public debt is the share of foreign currency in the external debt portfolio. In 2018, 95% of our external debt portfolio was debt in foreign currency, a very small part was in local currency. One of our main goals was to reduce it to 85% in the medium term. Today, 81% of our external debt portfolio is in foreign currency. We are moving in this direction, already in the medium term we plan to carry out work to further reduce it.
Another risk parameter is the presence of debt with variable interest rates. Some debts are presented with fixed interest rates and some with variable interest rates depending on changes in market conditions. In 2018, floating rate debt accounted for 65% of the debt portfolio. Currently, we have reduced this figure to 35%, and our goal is to reduce it to a minimum,” he said.