As of the end of April 2025, Ukraine’s national debt has increased by 5% and reached 180 billion dollars. This growth is primarily attributed to funding from the European Union, but a significant portion of the increase consists of contingent debt obligations serviced by revenues from frozen Russian assets.
This is reported by Finway
This was reported by the head of the Committee on Financial, Tax, and Customs Policy, Danilo Hetmantsev, citing official data from the Ministry of Finance. As of April 30, 2025, the total national and state-guaranteed debt of Ukraine in hryvnia equivalent amounted to 7,480.3 billion hryvnias, and in currency equivalent – 180 billion US dollars.
Details of Debt Growth
Compared to the previous month, the national debt increased with the following indicators:
- by 5% in hryvnias (+357.1 billion hryvnias);
- by 4.8% in dollars (+8.2 billion dollars).
This has become the largest monthly increase in debt over the past year. Overall, from January to April, the debt grew by 7.3% in hryvnias and 8.4% in currency equivalent, amounting to 499.3 billion hryvnias and 13.9 billion dollars, respectively.
The main factor behind the debt growth has been financial obligations to the EU, which arose under the new financial initiative of the G7 countries – Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration for Ukraine (ERA). Under this initiative, Ukraine received:
- 7 billion dollars in contingent debt from the EU and Canada;
- 3.3 billion dollars in macro-financial assistance from the EU under the Ukraine Facility, the interest on which is covered by the EU itself.
According to the ULCM mechanism, these funds do not need to be repaid from the state budget but are to be serviced from revenues generated by frozen Russian assets. The creditor, namely the EU, can only demand repayment if reparations are received from the Russian Federation.
Domestic Debt and Its Structure
In addition to the rapid growth of external debt, domestic national debt is conversely decreasing. In the first four months of 2025:
- domestic debt in hryvnias decreased by 1.8% (-33.4 billion hryvnias);
- the volumes of government bond placements remain weak due to low market activity.
Analysis of the structure of national debt shows that 74.5% is external debt, while 25.5% is domestic. The currency of the debt is also a significant factor: 76.4% is foreign currency debt, including foreign currency government bonds, while 23.6% is debt in hryvnias. At the same time, 67.7% of the debt has a fixed rate, while 32.3% has a variable rate.
Hetmantsev suggested that the Ministry of Finance allocate contingent obligations under the ERA initiative into a separate category, as such amounts are currently included in the total national debt, even though they are not subject to standard servicing.