The same source claims that this debt started to escalate from 2019. From that year onward, it experienced an increase of 7 billion. However, according to forecasts by the DGDP, within the next five years, the public debt of the DRC is likely to exceed 15 billion USD.
According to the public debt statistical bulletins published in March 2023, the debt stock as of December 31, 2022, was valued at more than 9 billion dollars, which is 41% domestic debt and 59% external debt.
The General Directorate of Public Debt indicates that this significant increase in debt is due to the central public administration's expenditures, which have been higher than public revenues since 2019.
However, it explains that the foreign debt is contracted directly by the central administration with, notably, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Estimated at nearly 6 billion dollars, this money has covered, among other things, public spending related to the financing of free primary education.
The internal public debt, for its part, amounts to more than 4 billion dollars.
A part of it has financed public spending triggered by treasury bonds issued by the Treasury to the Central Bank.
The rest is comprised solely of budgetary arrears of more than one year from the central administration.
The DRC's debt had been alleviated under Joseph Kabila, dropping from 13.704 billion to 2.931 billion dollars following the country's reach of the completion point of the HIPC Initiative (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries), on July 1, 2010. But today, the arrow of public debt is climbing again.
Gisèle Mbuyi