LJUBLJANA (Slovenia), May 22 (SeeNews) - Slovenia's finance ministry said it has concluded its long-term funding programme for the fiscal year 2017, and will now focus only on short-term financing in line with the adopted T-bill issuance plan.

For 2017, the general government debt is estimated at about 77% of GDP, which is below the EU's stability and growth pact debt rule, the finance ministry said in a statement on Friday.

"Regular euro debt refinancing and early refinancing of expensive dollar debt with cheaper euro debt has reduced interest expenditure and had significant budgetary impact", the finance ministry noted.

Interest costs in the state budget are projected at 960 million euro ($1.1 billion) in 2017, or 2.31% of GDP, which is significantly lower than 1,064 million euro, or 2.7% in 2016. In 2018, interest expenses are expected to fall further to 870 million euro, or 1.99% of GDP.

Slovenia has so far, with all five cross-currency liability management transactions, bought back 47% of the existing US dollar debt portfolio so that the USD-denominated debt in government debt structure now represents only 12.5%. The rest is denominated in euro.

Last week, Slovenia purchased a total of $1.1 billion of its outstanding 2022, 2023 and 2024 notes.

The finance ministry added that active debt management has not been overlooked by rating agencies, on the contrary, Moody's issued a report in May stating that Slovenia’s launch of debt buyback is credit positive.

($=0.895339 euro)