In an interview with the Kabar information agency, Kyrgyzstan President Sadyr Japarov said that the country’s external debt is “not a problem.”
According to Japarov, Kyrgyzstan’s external debt now stands at $4.5 billion.
“We are not afraid of the external debt now. Before 2020, we had reasons to worry. In 2020, Kyrgyzstan’s state budget was about 250 billion KGS and GDP was about 700 billion KGS. Now the budget has reached 700 billion KGS and GDP has exceeded 1.5 trillion KGS,” the president said.
He said that today, Kyrgyzstan’s gold and foreign exchange reserves total about $6 billion, compared to $2 billion in 2020. The National Bank has accumulated about 60 tons of gold, compared to 16 tons in 2020.
Commenting on the possibility of paying off the entire debt right now, Japarov said this is not profitable for the country, because foreign loans were taken for 30-40 years at 2% per annum, and if Kyrgyzstan pays off before this deadline, it will pay more than 2%.
“We will fully repay our external debt according to schedule by 2035,” the president said.
It was earlier reported that a large part of Kyrgyzstan’s external debt — $1.7 billion — is owed to the Export-Import Bank of China.
