Mr. Giorgi Tabuashvili, First Deputy Minister of Finance of Georgia and Ms. Rashmi Shankar, Lead Economist of the World Bank held a Joint Press Briefing on 20th March 2015 in relation with information released by an NGO Transparency International – Georgia on the performance of the Ministry of Finance. In his opinion, volume of expenditures envisaged in the State Budget of 2014 was defined in line with the Law on State Budget.
“Tax revenues exceeded our projections in the last few days of the past year. Respectively, Ministry of Finance channeled the surplus tax revenues in full compliance with the law to the tax refund sub-account and provided adequate information on it to general public. We wish to reiterate that there is no connection between the referred funds and budget expenditures. Besides, it is absolutely impossible to spend a penny more than expenditures approved by the Parliament of Georgia without amending the State Budget. As for the Budget Deficit indicator, let me explain that in calculating the number we are guided by our legislation and IMF guidelines on public fund statistics, which exclude the turnover at tax refund sub-account from budget deficit calculations. Therefore, accusations towards the Ministry of Finance allegedly manipulating the budget deficit indicator and providing inaccurate information to public and international organizations is merely false and incompetent!” noted First Deputy Minister of Finance.
In his opinion, both International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank apply the referred methodology and have never questioned the accounting or reporting of public funds by the Ministry of Finance of Georgia.
As mentioned at the Joint Press Briefing, Ministry of Finance of Georgia will start publishing the budget deficit indicators with reference to respective methodology details at its official website to avoid similar cases of different public opinion stemming from dubious information released recently by a third party on the state budget deficit of 2014.