Romania’s public debt up marginally to 60.2% of GDP in April

Romania’s public debt under the EU’s ESA methodology edged up marginally in April, by RON 1.7 billion (EUR 327 million) to RON 1.17 trillion, while, due to the exchange rate variations, it decreased by 0.7% m/m when expressed in euros to EUR 227.9 billion, according to data published by the Finance Ministry. 

The debt-to-GDP ratio edged up to 60.2% at the end of April from 60.1% one month earlier. 

The publication of the Q2 GDP will result in a downward correction of the ratio calculated at the end of April. However, it has already exceeded the 60% ratio under semi-definitive data unlikely to be revised significantly, at the end of March.

During the first four months of 2028, Romania’s external debt rose by EUR 6.7 billion (or only EUR 4.8 billion including the effects of the exchange rate variation), which indicates slower nominal growth compared to EUR 34 billion during the entire year 2025 or EUR 36.1 billion, thanks to comparatively smaller budget deficit to finance this year: only 1.2% of GDP in January-April compared to nearly 3% of GDP in the same period last year. For the entire year, the country’s deficit is likely to fall down to 6.2% of GDP from 7.6% of GDP in 2025.

Continuous inflation will ease the advance of the debt-to-GDP ratio, which has advanced by 10.2 percentage points over the past two years, to 59.3% at the end of 2025. S&P, in April, projected a ratio of only 60.4% at the end of this year, while more recently in May the European Commission issued a forecast of 61.6%. 

According to data recently published by Eurostat and cited by Ziarul Financiart, for the first quarter of 2026, Romania was below the EU average in terms of public debt to GDP, with  60.1% of GDP, but ranked 4th in the top annual growth in Q1 (+4.3 percentage points). However, compared to Q4 2025, it had the smallest advance (0.8 percentage points). 

The European Union recorded an average share of public administration debt in GDP of 82.9% in the first quarter of the year, slightly increasing compared to the same period in 2025. The highest shares of public debt in GDP were reported in Greece (143%), Italy (138%), France (117%), Belgium (109%) and Spain (101%), and the lowest in Estonia (25%), Denmark (26%), Bulgaria (28%) and Luxembourg (29%). 

The largest increases were reported by Finland (+5.5 pp), Bulgaria (+4.8 pp), Poland (+4.5 pp), Romania (+4.3 pp), France (+4 pp), Luxembourg and Belgium (both +3.1 pp).

At the opposite pole, the largest decreases were observed in Greece (-9.4 pp), Cyprus (-7.4 pp), Slovenia (-4.8 pp), Portugal (-3.9 pp), Denmark (-2.4 pp) and Spain (-1.7 pp).

iulian@romania-insider.com

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