{"id":127942,"date":"2020-04-04T17:53:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T17:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/2020\/04\/04\/249266\/"},"modified":"2024-12-15T13:40:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T13:40:55","slug":"fitch-ratings-projects-that-armenias-government-debt-may-rise-from-53-6-at-end-2019-to-59-2-of-gdp-in-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/2020\/04\/04\/127942\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitch ratings projects that Armenia\u2019s  government debt may rise from 53.6% at end-2019 to 59.2% of GDP in 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>YEREVAN, April 4. \/ARKA\/. <\/strong> Armenia\u2019s general government debt is projected to rise from 53.6% at end-2019 to 59.2% of GDP in 2020 before falling back to 56.0% in 2021, upward revisions of 9.4pp and 7.4pp, respectively, since our last review, and well above the current &#8216;BB&#8217; median of 46.5%, Fitch Ratings said in a report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018We assume some drawdown on central government deposits this year (by 0.8pp to 5.0% of GDP), use of budget support available under Armenia&#8217;s IMF precautionary Stand-By Arrangement, and domestic debt issuances. A high share of government debt is foreign currency-denominated (79% versus the &#8216;BB&#8217; median of 56%) giving rise to exchange rate risk,\u2019 it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Fitch ratings, the coronavirus shock has increased external risks to the Armenian economy. Fitch forecasts the current account deficit remains high, at 8.5% of GDP in 2020 and 8.1% in 2021, compared with the 2018-2019 average of 8.8% and the current &#8216;BB&#8217; median of 2.9%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Allowing for statistical discrepancies, the actual deficit could be closer to 5% of GDP, but only around a third of this is covered by non-debt creating capital inflows. The current account will be negatively affected this year by a collapse in tourism (which contributed 0.7pp to last year&#8217;s balance), the fall in prices of commodities and lower remittances from Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018We expect this to be largely offset by import compression and lower energy costs. Fitch forecasts that net external debt will increase to 52.9% of GDP in 2021 from 46.7% in 2019, well above the &#8216;BB&#8217; median of 19.4%, and the relatively high bank deposit dollarization ratio, at 52%, adds to risks.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Armenian Minister of Economy Tigran Khachatryan stated on April 3 that  the country&#8217;s government envisages an increase in its own financial expenses, if necessary, by increasing the debt, \u201cbut this should be within a reasonable framework.\u201d<br>\nAccording to Armenia\u2019s National Statistics Committee, the country\u2019s total public debt at the end of December 2019 amounted to $7.324.167 billion. The external public debt stood at $5 789.729 billion. -0-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Armenia\u2019s general government debt is projected to rise from 53.6% at end-2019 to 59.2% of GDP in 2020 before falling back to 56.0% in 2021, upward revisions of 9.4pp and 7.4pp, respectively, since our last review, and well above the current &#8216;BB&#8217; median of 46.5%, Fitch Ratings said in a report<\/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":[15837,15645,15389,12344,13548,12351],"class_list":{"0":"post-127942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy-en","8":"category-news","9":"tag-armenia-2","10":"tag-fitch-2","11":"tag-fitch-ratings-2","12":"tag-gdp","13":"tag-government-debt","14":"tag-ratings"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127942","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=127942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127942\/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=127942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}