YEREVAN, October 31. /ARKA/. Armenia’s draft budget for 2023 has earmarked about 605 billion drams for servicing the country’s public debt, Finance Minister Tigran Khachatryan said at the parliamentary hearings of 2023 draft budget on Monday.

The minister stressed that the state budget deficit of 3.1% will be mostly financed from domestic sources. The nominal government debt is expected to amount to 4.232 trillion drams in 2022 and to 4.625 trillion drams in 2023. The domestic debt will make 41.4% of the total debt in 2023.

The Armenian Ministry of Finance expects to reduce the public debt/GDP ratio to a level no higher than 50% in 2023.

According to the budget of Armenia for 2022, the size of the public debt at the end of the year will reach 4 trillion 741 billion drams (60.2% of GDP).

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.  ($1 - $394.4 drams). -0-