Government representatives continued discussions on credit with foreign banks that started a month ago on a conference in Vienna. Now they are discussing interest rate and repayment period for the debt that state is supposed to take this year, in the amount of 455 million EUR, it was said to Pobjeda daily from Ministry of Finance.
On January 12th, the Government passed a platform for participation on conference Euromoney in Vienna, where they had talks with representatives of ERSTE, Societe Generale, OTP and Deutsche Bank. The conference traditionally gathers around a thousand investors from all over the world. Montenegrin delegation was Minister of Finance Darko Radunovic and his colleagues Nikola Vukicevic and Dragan Darmanovic.
The Ministry did not give precise information on who they talked to.
“We had successful conversations with many financial institutions on the subject of Montenegro taking loans. Conversations focused on repayment periods and interest rates”, it was said in the Ministry.
European MPs recently discussed Montenegrin public debt. Andrei Kovacev from European People’s Party suggested that the resolution includes an invitation to Montenegrin authorities to deal with growing public debt that will reach 70% GDP by the end of the year.
Pobjeda daily asked the Ministry if there were any reasons to worry.
“The Law on budget and fiscal responsibility has measures in place that entail activities on both income and expense sides. These measures will make budget deficit below 3% of GDP by 2019, and by 2020 we expect a suficit. Projections show that the public debt will start decreasing in 2020 and continually decrease from then on”, Ministry said and reminded that the level of public debt is conditioned by the construction of highway.
Commenting on Kovacev’s invitation to reassess projects of public infrastructure that influence fiscal stability, Ministry said that the Law on budget for 2017 has infrastructural projects included.
