Baku, Azerbaijan, May 2. The International
Monetary Fund (IMF) is going to have an Article 4 mission to
Georgia to discuss policies, Thanos Arvanitis, Deputy Director of
the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, said during a
briefing, Trend reports.
“We have a three-year program with Georgia that started in June
2022 and this program would expire in June 2025. At this moment,
there are no discussions on a new program. The authorities have not
requested a new program. However, we continue to be engaged, as
with all members of the IMF, and we had a staff visit recently. I
think that we are going to have also what we call an Article 4
mission to discuss policies. Therefore, this will be an opportunity
for us to engage into developments recently, but also the policy
response that is appropriate coming forward,” he said.
Arvanitis noted that the Georgian economy over the past year,
since 2022 actually, has been very strong.
“We’ve seen macroeconomic performance with very strong growth
rates. Last year, growth rate was 9.4%, inflation, just under 2%.
Debt-to-GDP ratio is around 36. So, therefore, the economic policy
performance has been very strong. We forecast growth rate to taper
off a bit to about 6% in 2025 and about 5% in 2026 with inflation
remaining contained. I think a lot of this and the policies in the
future will be discussed in the forthcoming Article 4 consultation.
The Article 4 discussion, also would set the stage on policies that
are appropriate for Georgia. At this moment, we don’t have any
preconditions. We’re just having discussion on policies and our
engagement with countries, with Georgia, with all the members of
the IMF, is to make sure that economic policies are appropriate for
the circumstances that the country is facing,” he added.