News - Armenia finance minister: National debt of more than $10 billion is safe

There is no fear that the current level of Armenia's national debt can create problems. Minister of Finance Vahe Hovhannisyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am about this in the National Assembly Monday, referring to the fact that Armenia's national debt has exceeded $10 billion. "We have always said that the absolute value of the [national] debt does not mean anything, we should look at the relative indicator of the debt to the [country’s] GDP. We are targeting to have a [national] debt to the GDP ratio of 48.5 percent in 2024. Below 50 percent of GDP is considered a safe and risk-free level, which enables us to include additional debt in case of various shocks and not subject our fiscal system to additional shocks," said the finance minister. When asked of how effectively this national debt was spent, Vahe Hovhannisyan responded: "The work being done with our debt is just a small part of the work that is being done. I believe the [Armenian] public should be interested in what kind of work is being done with the taxes they pay because 80 percent of the work is being done with those taxes. I would not like to talk about the efficiency of individual loans because it is related to the efficiency of all our spending in general. We have institutions that monitor this efficiency. We have inspection, re-inspection bodies, we have reports where the results of the work performed are presented." And as for the underperformance of capital expenditures, the Armenian finance minister said: "Capital spending is increasing dramatically, and sometimes our capacity is not growing at the same rate as capital spending. Yes, we don't have the speed we would like, but we are improving it qualitatively every year."