YEREVAN, October 31. /ARKA/. Armenia's Finance Ministry expects the country’s public debt/GDP ratio to drop in 2023 to a level not exceeding 50%.

"We expect Armenia's public debt to decrease from last year's level of 60.3% to a level not exceeding 50% in 2023," Finance Minister Tigran Khachatryan said during a parliament hearing on Armenia's state for the next year.

He said the forecast is  made based on Armenian national currency’s strengthening against major currencies, which in turn has improved more rapidly the public debt/GDP ration than it could have been under other conditions.

According to Khachatryan, at the end of last year foreign currency debt made up 70% of the total public debt, which has dropped now to about 60% when recalculated at the new exchange rate of the dram.

According to the National Statistics Committee, Armenia's total public debt stood at about $9,992,116,000 as of August 31, 2022, having grown by a little over $19 million from the previous month.

On December 31, 2021, the country's total public debt stood at $9,225,643,000.  According to the NSC, of the total public debt about $6,288,492,000 were the external debt of the government, which dropped by $112.5 million from late July 2022, while domestic debt in late August   2022  was higher by $130.5 million growing to about $3,703,623,000.

The government's external debt decreased by $106 million to a little over $5.7 billion as of late August 2022.

The debt of the Central Bank decreased by over $6.4 million to $540.5 million. Of the domestic debt, over $3.3 billion (an increase of $62 million) were owed to resident holders of government bonds. Some $369.6 million were owed to holders of the government's Eurobonds (an increase of $70.3 million). Also, $10.7 million were owed as domestic guarantees, a drop of $2.3 million. - 0-