The Debt Management Specialist’s initial focus was an assessment of the public debt management legal environment, institutional coordination and arrangements, public debt management initiatives and capacity, public debt portfolio composition, and macroeconomic condition in Georgia. This report provides a general overview of these fore mentioned components.

A key component to this Technical Assistance program in Georgia is the Ministry of Finance’s Public Debt and External Finance Department’s efforts in developing a medium-term debt management strategy (MTDS). This document provides an overview of a medium-term debt management strategy’s concepts, potential benefits, core principles and enabling framework, and macroeconomic coordination. Also, included is a narrative on risk indicators and targets, trends in debt management, debt and capital market development as an MTDS objective, and database system suggestions for debt management analytics.

Georgia’s public debt to GDP stood at 35.5% as of 2014 and the composition of foreign currency and domestic currency debt to total public debt was 75% to 25% respectfully. Georgia’s external public borrowing is primarily on concessional terms from multilateral and bilateral sources for addressing infrastructure and other development needs.