The first deputy minister of finance, Giorgi Kakauridze declares, that the ministry is counting the debt of municipal state companies, which operate mainly with budget subsidies. Within the framework of the agreement reached with the International Monetary Fund, the debt of these companies should be statistically recorded as the debt of the government sector, that is why the Ministry of Finance is currently engaged in counting their debt.
The Deputy Minister of Finance, Giorgi Kakauridze, stated in the Parliament that the debt of these companies is about 0.4 percent of the GDP, or about GEL 300 million.
"There are such LLCs that mainly depend on the state budget, including cleaning LLCs, transport companies and so on, which are numerous in municipalities. As a rule, such LLCs rarely have a deficit, because they have a large subsidy component in their income, although they have accumulated liabilities. This debt portion is about 0.4 percent of GDP. This debt is not reflected in the budget. The final version of the budget, which will be introduced on November 30, will reflect this number. We already know that 0.4 percent of GDP is their liabilities. We are currently going through this according to each LLC in order to present it," said Giorgi Kakauridze.
According to the document attached to the 2023 budget project, the state debt will be 38.9% of GDP in 2023, therefore, after adding the debt of municipal companies, this number will increase to 39.3% of GDP.
As of the fiscal risk analysis document attached to the 2023 budget project, the debt of 148 state companies totals GEL 9.5 billion.
