Turkey: Government’s gross debt stock totals $209B

By Gokhan Ergocun </p> <p>ISTANBUL (AA) – Turkey's Treasury and Finance Ministry announced that the government's gross debt stock was around 1.16 trillion Turkish liras (nearly $209 billion) at the end of March.</p> <p>Last month's figure was up 27.3% from the same period of last year, according to the official data released on Monday. </p> <p>The gross debt stock includes the outstanding debt of public sector institutions, the Central Bank, private companies, and households.</p> <p>More than half of the debt stock is in local currency — some 592.76 billion Turkish liras ($106.8 billion) — while the rest is denominated in foreign currencies.</p> <p>The country's total gross debt stock's 53.7% was domestic and 46.3% was external.</p> <p>As of end of 2018, Turkish government’s gross debt stock amounted to 1.07 trillion Turkish liras ($202.5 billion).</p> <p>Meanwhile, the stock of Treasury receivables stood at 18.8 billion Turkish liras ($3.4 billion) as of March 31. </p> <p>Local governments with a stock of 11.86 billion Turkish liras ($2.13 billion) held the largest share of Treasury receivables.</p> <p>The total amount of receivables collected by the Treasury stood at 212.6 million Turkish liras (around $38.3 million) by the end of March.</p> <p>The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was around 5.55 as of end of March, up from around 5.27 at the end of last year.