Among export destinations of Georgia, Russia moved to the top position in the nine months of 2019 with 14 percent share in total exports, leaving Azerbaijan slightly behind (13 percent share in total), Trend reports via the World Bank.
As reported, among other top partners, Romania absorbed 5.5 percent of Georgian exports, up from 1.6 percent in 2018.
The most exported items in the nine months of 2019 in Georgia were copper ores, used cars and pharmaceuticals.
Turkey, Russia and China were the largest trade partners on the import side representing 38 percent of total imports.
Traditionally, oil products were among the top imported goods with 8.4 percent share in total imports, down from 9.6 percent in 2018. Other external inflows have been mixed. In the first nine months of 2019, money transfers from abroad rose by 8.5 percent compared to a year earlier.
Most transfers (25 percent) continue to come from Russia; however, its share has been declining steadily (29 percent of transfers during the same period of 2018).Tourism proceeds declined for the third consecutive month in September due to the Russian authorities’ ban on flights to Georgia.
Despite this, tourism revenues in the year-to-September were up 2.3 percent year-on-year. Credit grew by a healthy 13.3 percent year-on-year (excluding foreign exchange effect) in October. The credit expansion was driven by lari denominated loans which increased by 23 percent year-on-year, while foreign currency denominated loans increased by 6.8 percent. Deposit growth accelerated sharply from the previous month (by 2.8 pp) to 11.2 percent, with both foreign currency and lari deposits contributing.
Financial soundness indicators improved in the third quarter of the year; however, profitability remains below levels recorded a year earlier.
Return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA) stood at 16.4 percent (1 pp lower than the previous year) and 2.1 percent (0.1 pp lower than previous year), respectively in September of 2019.
Meanwhile, the budget continued to perform well. Revenues increased by almost 9 percent year-on-year in September, bringing the growth rate in the first nine months of the year to 10 percent.
Spending growth was faster (around 18 percent in September year-on-year as well as year-to date), mostly due to smoother execution of capital spending. With this, the deficit increased to around 1.2 percent of GDP, compared to budgeted deficit target of 2.7 percent of GDP for the year.
"The authorities of Georgia reached a staff level agreement on completing the fifth review of the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) in October 2019, acknowledging the adequacy of the macro-fiscal framework so far. They also requested a one-year extension of the EFF, expected to provide further credibility of the economic policies in the election year," said the World Bank.
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