The amended draft changes to the 2021 budget to be submitted today to the Extraordinary Plenary Session. According to Giorgi Kakauridze, the First Deputy Minister of Finance, the updated version included solely technical changes in the textual component.

“The GDP will rise from 3.4% to 7.7% as a result of the modifications. The deficit has been lowered from 7.6% to 6.9%. The government’s debt has been lowered to 54.6%. The government raises taxes by 1 billion 114 million GEL and boosts budget income by 1 billion 175 million GEL. The state budget will be used to spend nearly 19.5 billion GEL next year.

The Parliament had the only major remark that if additional revenues are mobilized, the accumulated amount shall be used to reduce the deficit. This is our approach as well. If an optimistic scenario develops, we will fully resort to additional resources to reduce the deficit to 6.5%. The revised draft budget has been amended to support 2 more, agricultural and economic productive sector programs, and pandemic-related health care costs.

GEL 446 million was added to the pandemic-related health expenditures and totaled GEL 846 million. More than GEL 150 million is provided for vaccination, which perfectly covers the 60% of our population”, - said Giorgi Kakauridze.

The opposition is not going to support the project.