As of June 30, public debt reached 7,4 billion euros, or 64,4 per cent of gross domestic product, the finance ministry said. This means that the debt has already exceeded the planned level by the end of the year, which according to the strategy for its management published by the Ministry, at the end of the year should be 63,9 percent.

Academician Abdulmenaf Bexheti in his review "Fiscal policies and fiscal space during the global pandemic with special reference to the Republic of Northern Macedonia" explained that the optimal level of debt is 53,42 percent. He concludes that from 2017 to 2020, public debt was in the range of 50 percent of GDP.

- Unfortunately, the space that existed until 2008, when the public debt was about 26 percent of GDP, was almost "spent" in 6-7 years through the so-called project "Skopje 2014"! Optimistic economists describe this level of public debt as moderate, based on formal limits of 60% of GDP, according to the Maastricht criteria for the EU, and as a consequence of this criterion claim that we still have enough space. Our scientific analysis of the optimal level of public debt shows that the threshold of positive correlation between debt and growth is 53,42 percent. Namely, this result coincides with the findings in the research, based on which the public debt of developing countries should be about half of that of developed countries, which, according to top world economists, is set between 90-100 percent of GDP - analyzes Bexheti.

With the rebalance of the budget, a new space for borrowing was created. The budget gap has now been increased by 183,6m euros from the basic budget. With this amount, the total difference between the money that is planned to be collected from taxes and other duties and those that are planned to be spent by the end of the year, is 751,7 million euros. This budget gap must be covered with loans. But, the loans already taken must also be repaid, and this year the total amount due is around 700 million euros. According to the budget, over 410 million euros are money provided from domestic sources of borrowing, about 1 billion from abroad, and about 6 million euros from the state bank deposit will be used to repay loans.

Most of the borrowing from abroad has already been done with the Eurobond in March of 700 million euros.

"During the second quarter of 2021, the second tranche of the EU Loan for macro-financial support in the amount of 80 million euros is expected to arrive, and additionally the budget financing will be realized through withdrawals from loans from international financial institutions, as well as through borrowing. on the domestic government securities market. "Through this financial structure, the state will be able to smoothly finance the budget deficit as well as to repay liabilities based on debt due during the year," reads the Public Debt Management Strategy 2021-2025.

In a year and a half, the debt has grown by almost 2 billion euros

Data from the Ministry of Finance show that we ended 2019 with a public debt of 5,54 billion euros, while in 2020 the debt increased by as much as 942 million euros, reaching 6,48 billion euros, and since then, in 6 months of this year, the debt increased by 904 million euros. That is, in a year and a half, the debt increased by almost 2 billion euros.

Old Eurobonds will be returned, new ones will be taken

In 2023, 450 million euros should be returned for the Eurobond issued in 2016, in 2025, 500 million should be collected for the Eurobond issued in 2018, and in 2026, 700 million euros should be provided for the Eurobond issued in 2020.

The Public Debt Management Strategy 2021-2025 states that sources of financing will be domestic creditors, international financial institutions, but that it is possible to issue a new Eurobond.