Bulgaria’s gross foreign debt grew by almost 20 per cent in the first eight months of this year to reach 24.06 billion euro, or 90 per cent of the forecasted gross domestic product (GDP) for 2007, the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) said on October 23, as quoted by investor.bg.

The increase was by 19.7 per cent, or 3.95 billion euro, for the January-August 2007 period, compared to the figure at the end of 2006. Long-term debt was 16.77 billion euro, or 69.7 per cent of the whole debt, while the short-term obligations were 7.29 billion euro, or the remaining 30.3 per cent.

The gross public and state-guaranteed foreign debt dropped by 12.8 per cent, compared to the end of 2006, to 4.06 billion euro by August 31 2007. The drop resulted from Bulgaria’s reclaiming of globally issued securities and the pro-term repayment of the debt to the International Monetary Fund completed in April this year.

Bulgarian companies’ gross foreign debt amounted to 20 billion euro, or 74.8 per cent of GDP. Commercial banks’ debt grew by 18.4 per cent since the beginning of the year to 3.97 billion euro. The rest of the economy sectors contributed 8.55 billion euro to the total amount of the debt, which represented a growth of 18.9 per cent for the first eight months of 2007.

At the end of August, foreign obligations on loans related to direct investment amounted to 8.34 billion euro, and were thus 41.4 per cent more than at the end of last year.