"We have a high indicator of economic growth: 45% was witnessed in April, 25.8% - in May, 18.7% - in June and overall 12.8% in the first month of the year. It has enabled us to adjust the State Budget for 2021 and increase it by 1.2 billion GEL. Reduction of the budget deficit has also been possible, while external debt will start declining this year", - Irakli Garibashvili, Prime Minister of Georgia stated at the presentation of the 10-Year Development Plan of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia.
The Head of Government of Georgia noted that the external debt indicator is pretty high and it is one of the key challenges in the coming years, along with the current account deficit, which will need to decline.
"We continue presenting the long-term vision of the Government of Georgia and showcase a 10-Year Development Vision of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia. However, prior to the detailed presentation, let me make a brief introduction. You may well be aware that we have been through a difficult period. I mean the pandemic and post-pandemic period, which remains to be our challenge, as we see that the epidemic situation is deteriorating in the country. I wish to remind the population of the country where we were some months ago - at the beginning of the year - when we started pursuing active measures and imported vaccines to Georgia. Naturally, our country was facing a huge challenge. We incurred a tremendous loss. Government of Georgia has to borrow quite large, significant resources - over 2 billion USD in total - specifically to manage the pandemic and over 3 billion USD had to be borrowed last year. Naturally, it was and is a heavy burden on every citizen of the country and needs to be managed by the Government. We have a high indicator of economic growth: 45% was witnessed in April, 25.8% - in May, 18.7% - in June and overall 12.8% in the first month of the year. It has enabled us to adjust the State Budget for 2021 and increase it with 1.2 billion GEL. Reduction of the budget deficit has also been possible, while external debt will start declining this year. External debt indicator is pretty high and it is one of the main challenges ahead. In general, the current account deficit should be managed and reduced, along with the budget deficit," noted the Prime Minister of Georgia.
