Belarus plans to attract financial assistance from Russia to repay its public debt. This was announced today, November 12, by the Minister of Finance of the Republic Yuri Seliverstov at an expanded meeting of the Standing Committee of the House of Representatives on Budget and Finance.
According to him, the amount of public debt to be repaid next year is 17.7 billion rubles (about $ 6 billion). Debt servicing will require another 6 billion rubles ($ 2 billion), which will be taken from budget revenues.
"For repayment, it will be necessary to attract additional resources, which we plan to attract from the financial assistance of the Russian Federation in accordance with previously reached agreements," the minister said.
Seliverstov added that the authorities will also work on refinancing part of the state debt. The Ministry of Finance will continue to borrow money on the domestic market through bonds. It is also planned to place them for about 560 million rubles (about $ 186 million).
In addition, the Finance Minister of Belarus said that the possible budget deficit for next year could reach only 1.46% of GDP. To cover it, if necessary, as before, it is planned to use the remaining budget.
Recall, the draft republican budget for the next year was submitted to the Parliament of Belarus on October 31. It contains a deficit of about 4.3 billion rubles (more than $ 1.4 billion).