Page 28 - bne IntelliNews George country report Sept 2017

debt averaged $11,028.43mn from 2007-2017, according to the National Bank of Georgia. Gross external debt include both public sector (general government, public corporations and national bank) and private sector (banking and other sectors) external debt.
Georgia’s government debt is expected to inflate to 3.5% of GDP in 2017-2019, in part due to the depreciation of the Georgian lari and the high level of dollarisation of Georgia's external debt. External government debt is expected to peak at 43% of GDP in 2018.
The country's high current account deficit, which reached 13.3% of GDP at end-2016, is one of the important sources of external debt.
7.0 FX
Georgia - Foreign exchange rate
Jun-16
Sep-16
Dec-16
Jan-17
Mar-17
Jun-17
Currency (units per EUR) (average)
2.45
2.59
2.80
2.87
2.64
2.70
Currency (units per USD) (average)
2.19
2.31
2.65
2.70
2.47
2.41
The depreciation of currencies in Georgia’s main trade partner countries - Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenia and Russia - has put pressure on the Georgian lari, which lost some 40% of its value in 2014-2015. The lari stabilised and began to appreciate in the first part of 2016, but began to depreciate again in November, reaching a record low exchange rate of GEL2.7 to the dollar in early December and January.
The Georgian central bank has intervened 24 times on the foreign exchange markets since January 2016 to manage the exchange rate, and had begun to ease monetary policy after raising its refinancing rate from 4% to 8% in 2015 in order to boost growth.
Since April, the central bank gradually eased monetary policy by cutting the rate from 8% to 6.5% in four interventions, responding to the appreciation of the Georgian lari and a decline in inflation. At a mid-December meeting, it decided to keep the rate unchanged, saying that the depreciation was due to one-off factors and that the currency would stabilise.
The Georgian central bank received a strong political opprobrium for its handling of the depreciation in 2014-2015. The ruling Georgian Dream party publicly criticised the nominally politically independent regulator for causing inflation, and the latter came close to losing its responsibility to oversee the banking sector in what international observers deemed to be a political gesture.
28 GEORGIA Country Report September 2017 www.intellinews.com