Finance Minister Colm Imbert has taken issue with a newspaper article headlined “Government Borrows $14B in 9 months”.

In a statement, Mr Imbert says it gives the “false impression” that public debt increased by over $14 billion between October 2023 and June 2024.

Instead, the Minister insists that the article does account for refinancing transactions or repayments of principal.

He says in the period October 2023 to June 2024, Government made Central Government and Government Guaranteed Principal Repayments totalling $9.23 billion, of which Central Government was $6.8 billion and Government Guaranteed was $2.43 billion.

Mr Imbert says these reduced the net public debt by $9.23 billion.

Further, he says over the same period, a total of $2.67 billion in debt involved refinancing of Central Government and Government Guaranteed debt, which did not increase the public debt.

He went on to say, “Principal repayments and borrowing for refinancing must always therefore be deducted from the total government debt financing for any period to get the true level of borrowing. In this case, for the period October 2023 to June 2024, the public debt actually increased by $4.07 billion, or $10 billion less that the $14 billion figure quoted in the Guardian article.”