YEREVAN, December 25 /ARKA/. Armenian government’s debt in 2019 will amount to $6.913 billion or 49.8% of GDP, by $465 million more than in the outgoing year, the Ministry of Finance said in the annual loan program for next year, published on its official website.
The government’s debt in 2018 is expected to make $6.448 billion (3.137 trillion drams) or 50.7% of GDP against $6.173 billion (2.988 trillion drams) or 53.7% of GDP in 2017.
The weighted average interest rate of the government’s debt in 2019 will be 5.2%, up from 4.9% in 2018. and 2017. The share of spending in 2019 to be channeled into paying off the debt (interest payments) is expected to grow by 18.7 billion drams.
The cost of servicing the public debt (interest payments) in 2018 is expected to make 158 billion drams against 139.3 billion drams in 2018 (122.1 billion drams in 2017). As a result, interest payments in 2019 will amount to 2.3% of GDP or 9.6% of the budget spending.
The government’s domestic debt in 2019 will amount to 734 billion drams against 664 billion drams in 2018. At the same time, the volume of debt for dram-denominated government bonds will increase to 658 billion drams from 588 billion drams in 2018.
Armenia’s foreign debt in 2019 will make 2.630 trillion drams against 2.473 trillion drams in 2018.
According to the program, in 2019, the government will owe 39% of loan-generated debt to World Bank, 16.6% to the Asian Development Bank, 6.9% to the European Development Bank, 11.3% to Russia, 4.8% to Japan and 4.7% to Germany.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the country’s total public debt at the end of November 2018 stood at $6.765.5 billion, or 3.281.8 trillion drams (an increase of $41.4 million from the previous month). The government’s debt stood at $6.194.8 million or 3.005 trillion drams (an increase of $38.8 million), of which $4.825.1 billion or 2,340.6 billion drams were external debt (an increase of $5.9 million), and $1.369.7 billion or 664.4 billion drams were domestic debt (an increase of 32.9 million). ($1 – 484 dram) -0-
