Minister of Finance, Sinisa Mali, announced that Serbia will start withdrawing special drawing rights from the IMF, which it received last year, from January, and that it will use them to repay old debts.
In August, the IMF’s board of directors granted Serbia 627.6 million special drawing rights (SDRs), equivalent to about 759.71 million euros.
The IMF then distributed 95.8 percent of the total allocation of 650 billion dollars of SDR, which was approved by the Board of Directors of the Fund to support the liquidity and the fight of the member states against the pandemic and the consequences of the corona crisis.
– We will take the help that the IMF offered to all members last year under extremely favorable conditions and use it exclusively for one purpose, and that is the return of old debts, and we will withdraw that money from January – Mali specified in a statement for Tanjug.
Minister Mali pointed out that a total of about 2.8 billion euros of old debts are due for Serbia this year, part of which will be refinanced and part returned.
Most of the debts, about 55 percent, are due in the first quarter, so, according to him, the state will have a lot of work to do in the first three months to manage public debt, which needs to be refinanced, restructured and repaid.
According to the Minister of Finance, the state will continue with dinarization, so it is not planned to enter the international capital market this year.
“There is no need for that and we will concentrate on the domestic capital market. I expect to further increase the share of dinar loans in the total loan portfolio. For example, in 2012 we had about 19 percent of total liabilities in dinars, and now we are on 30 percent, which is good, because it is our currency, it is a natural hedge that we have against any oscillations,” Mali pointed out.
He added that the share of dollar bonds and dollar loans on the other side is decreasing, since their share was 34 percent in 2016, and now that percentage has dropped to only 10.3 percent.
– We manage our public debt very carefully, because it is a very important aspect of public finances. In 2021, we had a share of public debt below 58 percent of gross domestic product – said Mali.
He emphasized that public finances are stable, that the state has more than two billion euros on its account, the state deals with debt in the right way and that citizens should not worry about that, Novosti reports.
