A Reading of the Palestinian Economic Lifeline

The total public debt of Palestine as of 31-8-2019 amounted to $2.932 billion. It is equivalent to 10.879 billion sheqel. (Table No. 7)

While this public debt as of 31-12-2018 was $2.352 billion.. equivalent to 8.789 billion sheqel.

The external debt, as indicated by the statistics of the Ministry of Finance and Planning at the end of August 2019, amounted to $1.114 billion.. which includes: debt to Arab financial institutions amounting to $639 million, of which: $513 million to "Al-Aqsa Fund" and $14 million to the "Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development", while the debt to the "Islamic Development Bank" was $36 million.. and the "Qatar National Bank" $75 million...

As for the debt to international and regional institutions, it reached $337 million.. which includes the "World Bank" at $272 million and the "European Investment Bank" at $40 million and "OPEC" at $22 million...
As for bilateral loans, they amounted to $137 million, of which $77 million was from Spain.. and $60 million from Italy...

As for the domestic debt, it amounted to $1.818 billion... on 31-8-2019 while it was $1.321 billion on 31-12-2018.. where the domestic debt increased from bank loans of $656 million at the end of 2018... to $1.068 billion.. in August 2019... and in analyzing these data and the comparison, it appears that the bank loans that increased are short-term loans in 2019.. where these short-term loans increased from $126 million at the end of 2018 to $677 million in August 2019..
As for external support to Palestine as shown on 31-8-2019, the total external financing amounted to 1.231 billion sheqel.. between support for the Palestinian budget - 1.431 billion sheqel - , and development support (199 million sheqel) in the negative (due to the return of 448 million sheqel of development support to the United States Consulate to close the American grant), and the external financing reached: for budget support 1.430 billion sheqel.. of which 715 million sheqel from "Arab grants" which include the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia whose grants to support the Palestinian budget amounted to 469 million sheqel.. and Algeria with 94 million sheqel.. as for Qatar, its grants amounted to 117 million sheqel.. and Iraq 35 million sheqel...

The amounts of support for the Palestinian budget from the "donor countries" reached 715 million sheqel.. of which 490 million sheqel was a grant from the EU Palestinian Mechanism for Supporting and Managing Social and Economic Assistance where salary support from this grant amounted to 309 million sheqel and 119 million sheqel support for social cases.. as for support for Jerusalem hospitals from this European grant it was 62 million sheqel..
As for grants from various countries and through the World Bank, the grants amounted to 212 million sheqel....
• Source: Table No. 6 from the statistics of the Ministry of Finance and Planning – August 2019 ... data updated up to 25-9-2019 ... exchange rate 3.61 sheqel / dollar on 31-8-2019