The paper presents the issues related to public debt in the years of the Second Republic of Poland, and in particular supervision over state debt as well as the issues involved in the definition of public debt. Supervision over state debt was one of the elements of public finance transparency and was conducted by the parliamentary State Debt Supervision Committee (SDSC). Subsequent SDSCs were appointed pursuant to the provisions of laws on state debt supervision (of 1922 and 1936).

The Committee was responsible for ensuring formal supervision over state debt, i.e. checking whether the debt was incurred in compliance with statutory powers and whether incurred debt and granted guarantees were properly entered into the State Debt Ledger kept by the Treasury Ministry. SDSC was under an obligation to publish a statement of state debt and granted guarantees twice a year.

The definition of state debt was provided by both laws on state debt supervision. There was an ongoing debate throughout the Second Republic in the SDSC over the interpretation of the concept of state debt. The subject-matter of the dispute between subsequent committees and the government was the incorporation (or not) into public debt of the following items: state enterprises' debt, specific funds' debt, and, first of all, maturing liabilities. Subsequent governments of the Second Polish Republic were in favour of narrow interpretation of debt definition, whereas subsequent committees made a wider interpretation.

In the dispute, history did justice to the SDSC. The currently applicable definition of state public debt is close to the interpretation encouraged by subsequent State Debt Supervision Committees.