Mahfi Eğilmez calculates Turkey's external debt!

Economist Dr. Mahfi Eğilmez addressed the amount of external debt in an article written on his own blog. Eğilmez stated that while Turkey's total external debt stock is approximately 500 billion dollars, the foreign currency-denominated debt stock is 727 billion dollars.

In his article, which included tables, Eğilmez provided the following information:

"We generally look at the external debt stock and the external debt burden (External Debt Stock / GDP). Therefore, let me share the table of Turkey's external debt that we always look at (Source: Prepared by me from the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, Public Debt Management Report, March 2024 data.)

The data in this table does not show domestic borrowing made in foreign currency. However, there is also foreign currency borrowing made domestically by both the public and private sectors, as well as foreign currency-protected deposits. Now, let me share the table that also includes domestic foreign currency borrowing (I took the table below from an unpublished study by my colleague Hakan Özyıldız.)

The importance of this table is that it covers all borrowing made in foreign currency, regardless of the distinction between external or domestic borrowing.

Accordingly, while Turkey's total external debt stock is approximately 500 billion dollars, the total foreign currency-denominated debt stock is 727 billion dollars. Similarly, while the public sector external debt stock is 202.5 billion dollars, the public sector foreign currency-denominated debt stock, including the Central Bank and foreign currency-protected deposits, is 365.6 billion dollars.

As of January 2024, the total of our external liabilities with a remaining maturity of one year or less is 225.4 billion dollars (source: CBRT, Short-Term External Debt Statistics, January 2024). Of this stock, 47.4 billion dollars belongs to the public sector, 46.1 billion dollars to the Central Bank, and 131.9 billion dollars to private sector institutions. Of the 131.9 billion dollars belonging to private sector institutions, 61.4 billion dollars is the liability of banks and other financial institutions, and 60.5 billion dollars is the liability of real sector companies"