The authorities have decided to make another eye-opening before the elections, this time in connection with debts. They changed the form of presentation of the state debt in order to hide the real amount of debts.

The huge debts that today’s rulers of Armenia have accumulated in these years have become a real headache for them. No matter how they try to justify it, it doesn’t work, so they decided to subject the debts to “reconstruction” so that they appear less.

According to the data published by the Ministry of Finance in January, as of December 31 of last year, the government’s debt amounted to 14 billion 40 million dollars. According to the same data published by the Ministry of Finance in February, the government’s debt of 14 billion 40 million dollars recorded as of December 31 of last year has become 13 billion 897 million dollars.

By a “miracle”, as of literally the same day, the debt decreased by 143 million dollars.

What happened to so much debt, there is no explanation, no clarification.

At first glance, it seems that the exchange rate of the calculation has been changed. But no, the exchange rate remained the same. Credit guarantees were taken and deducted from the government’s debt. Previously, they were included in the government debt, now they are not.

They decided to present the government’s debt without guarantees.

Although it is not the case that guarantees are very different from government debts.

If the loans provided by the government’s guarantee are not returned tomorrow, the government itself is obliged to return them.

So, the guarantees are the same debts that depend on the government. But now they do not appear in the government’s debts. That is why the debt of the government, in the indicators published in January and February, as of the same day, decreased by 143 million dollars.

At the end of last year, the guarantees provided by the government amounted to 207 million dollars, of which 136 million dollars were included as internal guarantees of the government, 71 million dollars were included as external guarantees, in the debts of the Central Bank. Now the internal guarantees provided by the government have been removed from the government’s debt indicators, although they have not been repaid, on the contrary, they have increased.

Credit guarantees provided by the government at the beginning of this year reached almost 222 million dollars. The largest guarantee was provided to “Lydian Armenia”. As of February 1, it was 123 million dollars.

Previously, these amounts provided in the form of internal guarantees were not included in the government’s debts. As a result, the debt of the government increased from 14 billion 40 million dollars to 13 billion 897 million dollars.

At first glance, the index at the end of the previous year has decreased, but nothing has actually changed in the amount of the debt. On the contrary, the debt of the government continued to increase at the same high rate this year.

In January alone, the government’s debt increased by almost 212 million dollars.

This happened mainly at the expense of increasing foreign debts.

The foreign debt of the government increased from 6 billion 539 million dollars at the end of last year to 6 billion 741 million dollars as of the end of January this year.

It increased by almost 202 million dollars in one month. The domestic debt increased by 10 million.

As a result, the government’s debt as of January 31 amounted to 14 billion 109 million dollars, but without guarantees. Including the guarantees, or according to the previous calculation methodology, it would amount to 14 billion 260 million dollars, 220 million more than it was at the end of last year.

To imagine how the government debt has changed in the last year, let’s note that in 2025 on January 31, the debt of the government was around 12 billion 386 million dollars.

It increased by 1 billion 874 million dollars in one year.

Now, have you imagined at what rate the government is increasing the debts? That is why he does such manipulations with debts.

He decided not only to remove the provided internal credit guarantees from his own debts, but also to “hide” the public debt indicator, which, as is known, includes the debts of the government and the Central Bank. Of course, you cannot compare the debts of the Central Bank with the debts of the government, but they also reach several hundred million dollars. According to the latest published data, the Central Bank’s debts amount to 490 million dollars. At the beginning of the year, they even decreased a little, in contrast to the government’s debts.

By combining the debts of the government and the Central Bank, the guarantees provided by the government, it will turn out that the state debt of Armenia has reached 14.8 billion dollars. A little more and we will pass 15 billion.

However, when the CP members sat in the government seats, the state debt was only 6.7 billion. It increased by 8 billion dollars.

The debt of the government was 6.1 billion, they increased it to 14.2 billion.

They are proud of other increases, but they do not talk about the increase in the debt, the maintenance of which has become an extremely heavy burden on the state and the budget. 11 percent of the budget revenues, almost 14 percent of the tax revenues go to servicing only the interest on the government’s debt. The reason is that they not only increased the debt more than twice, but also significantly worsened the quality of the debt. And now, with such tricks, they are trying to hide the true picture of the debt.

HAKOB KOCHARYAN

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