{"id":108587,"date":"2017-07-04T12:31:38","date_gmt":"2017-07-04T12:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/2017\/07\/04\/246470\/"},"modified":"2024-12-15T13:29:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T13:29:58","slug":"fitch-raises-armenia-economic-growth-outlook-for-2017-to-3-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/2017\/07\/04\/108587\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitch raises Armenia economic growth outlook for 2017 to 3.4%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>YEREVAN, July 4. \/ARKA\/.<\/strong> Fitch has revised its growth projection up to 3.4% for 2017, with upside risks from stronger than expected public sector capital spending and faster export growth. Growth could accelerate further in 2018-19, but improving the country&#8217;s medium-term growth prospects is likely to require further progress in improving the investment climate, as total investment is low at 18.4% of GDP.<\/p>\n<p>Armenia&#8217;s exports are growing strongly, which helped its current account deficit to remain roughly stable at 2.7% of GDP in 2016. A favourable international environment characterised by a recovery in commodity prices, improved export diversification and stabilisation of the Russian economy will benefit export and remittances receipts, leading the current account deficit to average 2.1% in 2017-2018, almost half the expected &#8216;B&#8217; median. Lower current account deficits help mitigate external vulnerabilities given Armenia&#8217;s small size and commodity dependence, as well as helping to support stabilisation of the country&#8217;s high net external debt of 46.7% of GDP vs 20% for the rating category median.<\/p>\n<p>The country is continuing to adjust following the external shock in 2014-15 from the drop in commodity prices and remittances from Russia. GDP growth has recovered strongly reaching 6.5% in 1Q17, after the sharp deceleration to 0.2% in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Fitch expects Armenia&#8217;s general government deficit to narrow to 3.3% of GDP in 2017 after ballooning to 5.5% of GDP in 2016, compared with an original target of 3.5%.<\/p>\n<p>Fitch Ratings has affirmed Armenia&#8217;s Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) at &#8216;B+&#8217; with Stable Outlook.<\/p>\n<p>In the government budget for 2017, GDP growth is projected at 3.2%. The World Bank forecasts a 2.7 percent growth for Armenia in 2017, the International Monetary Fund predicts a 2.9% growth, the United Nations up to 2.5%, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 2.5% and the Asian Development Bank 2.2%. &#8211;0&#8212;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fitch has revised its growth projection up to 3.4% for 2017, with upside risks from stronger than expected public sector capital spending and faster export growth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","tstyn_error":""},"categories":[12139,9216],"tags":[15837,12623,15645,308],"class_list":{"0":"post-108587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy-en","8":"category-news","10":"tag-economic-growth","11":"tag-fitch-2","12":"tag-308"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}