METHODOLOGY FOR OPTIMIZING THE STRUCTURE OF UKRAINE’S PUBLIC DEBT UNDER CONDITIONS OF FINANCIAL TURBULENCE

Abstract

The article proposes a methodology for optimizing Ukraine's public debt structure in conditions of financial turbulence. It justifies the transition from narrowly focused approaches to an integrated methodology that simultaneously takes into account four key parameters of debt sustainability: the share of annual debt payments in budget revenues (fiscal acceptability); the ratio of external to internal debt (structural balance of funding sources); currency composition of the portfolio (minimum acceptable share of liabilities in national currency); uniformity of the maturity profile (no excessive repayment peaks in any year of the horizon). The methodology is presented as a sequential decision-making algorithm: inventory of the portfolio by source, currency, maturity, and type of rate; diagnosis of deviations from specified thresholds; corrective actions with a fixed priority sequence (first, reduction of the payment burden, then smoothing of maturity peaks, then increasing the hryvnia share and equalizing the share of external debt); recalculation of indicators and minimum stress testing of the suitability of decisions to basic shocks in rates, exchange rates, and income (as an element of the methodology). The proposed algorithm can be used as a tool for regular (quarterly) review of debt strategy and is consistent with the requirements of program-budget management. The relevance of this approach is determined by the need to simultaneously control the budgetary burden, currency vulnerability, the timing of payments, and dependence on external creditors in conditions of limited domestic market capacity and uneven financial revenues. The application of the methodology leads to the formation of a coordinated target portfolio structure across four dimensions (source, currency, maturity, type of rate), a balanced medium-term payment schedule, a quarterly calendar of operations, and a clear protocol for monitoring indicators, which increases the predictability of debt policy. The practical value lies in the transparency of the rules and the reproducibility of the procedures: the methodology does not require complex models, is based on available aggregate indicators, is easily integrated into the budget cycle, and ensures regular updates of the target debt structure, taking into account operational and legal constraints.