Morocco's public foreign debt stood at $19.8 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2010, up from $19.4 billion at the end of 2009 and at its highest since at least 2005, the finance ministry said on Friday. Morocco plans to disburse $2.1 billion to service foreign debt in 2011, $2.2 billion in 2012, about $2 billion annually in 2013 and 2014, $1.9 billion in 2015, $1.8 billion in 2016 and $2.3 billion in 2017, the data published by the ministry showed.
A total $549 million will be paid to service the foreign debt in the fourth quarter, it added. Public foreign debt stood at $19.4 billion by the end of 2009 and $17.9 billion by the end of the second quarter of 2010. The ministry did not explain the quarter-to-quarter rise in foreign debt. Morocco in September sold a 1-billion euro Eurobond with a 10-year maturity.
Public foreign debt is the sum of debt owed by the treasury and guaranteed loans granted by foreign lenders to Moroccan government institutions, banks and local councils. The Moroccan treasury accounted for 51.5 percent of the total $19.8 billion foreign debt, while 47.3 percent of the figure was owed by government firms, the data showed.
As a percentage of gross domestic product, public foreign debt accounted for 20.7 percent of Morocco's GDP in 2009 against 22 percent in 2005 when it stood at $12.5 billion, the ministry said in a press release. It did not give a percentage of GDP figure for the third quarter. Morocco's economy grew 3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, maintaining the same pace of growth as the previous quarter, the government's High Planning Commission (HCP) said earlier on Friday.
Reflecting a strengthening in public finances in recent years, the servicing of foreign debt took 14.2 billion dirhams ($1.7 billion) in 2009 - or 5.1 percent of the government's current receipts that year - versus 21.2 billion dirhams in 2005 which represented 9.3 percent of current receipts.
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