ArmInfo. For the first time, Armenia was ahead of Georgia in terms of per capita GDP. This has not happened since the time of Tigran II the Great. Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili wrote about this on his Facebook page.
"Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Armenia is ahead of Georgia for the first time in terms of Gross National Product per capita. This did not happen, of course, in my time, even during the time of Shevardnadze. This was not the case after Tigran II the Great, glorious ruler of Armenia. There is no reason from the point of view of geographical location and resources that the income of the residents of Armenia should be higher than that of Georgians, but Ivanishvili did this trick with Georgia.Let's talk about the figures at the end of the presidency of Shevardnadze, the GNP of Georgia per capita the population was $ 1,000, by the end of 2012, it was $ 4,000 during my government, in a word, every Georgian was four times richer than he was before, these are numbers that say that if there hadn't been a disaster in 2012 year, if my government didn't leave, Georgia would today be at the same level as Greece and Croatia are now. Women would not have to leave their families, take care of the elderly and clean other people's houses, our workers would not have to bend their backs and break necks at construction sites, "wrote Mikhail aakashvili, quoted by the website of "Georgia Online".
Recall, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan previously wrote on his Facebook page that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) officially confirmed the assessment according to which, by the end of 2019, Armenia surpassed Georgia in terms of GDP, and in 2020 it will outperform Azerbaijan, becoming a leading country in the South Caucasus region.
However, the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, Natia Turnava, does not agree with such assessments, who noted: When a politician or analyst strives to win with such indicators and begins to compare Georgia with other countries in the region, I urge them to familiarize themselves with elementary methodology. This is a misnomer, since elementary methodological issues were not taken into account here. I note that in November 2019 in Georgia, the Statistical Service (GeoStat) introduced a new method for calculating the country's GDP, which is not yet reflected in the summary of international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Countries of our region - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine, Moldova. - They also recalculated their GDP according to the new methodology, but this happened much earlier, respectively, their data was already reflected in the IMF data. Believe me, in the conditions of such high economic growth, in our estimation, per capita GDP in Georgia will reach $ 4,700. Consequently, in the next IMF outcome document all this will already be reflected>.
On November 15, 2019, the National Statistics Service of Georgia began introducing a new methodology for calculating GDP - SNA 2008. Prior to this, Georgia's GDP was calculated using the 1993 SNA methodology.