FISCAL DEFICIT
- Danger threshold
- -4.00%
- Desired threshold
- -2.00%
- Current level
- -1.22% (2025)
The budget balance was -1.22% of GDP in 2025, inside the desired threshold of -2.00% and a long way from the -4.00% danger line. On this measure the fiscal position needs no corrective attention: a deficit of this size is financed without strain and leaves room to absorb a revenue shortfall before the desired level is breached. The reading describes a level rather than a direction — one annual observation cannot establish whether consolidation is continuing. Of the six ratios in this profile, fiscal policy is the least demanding.
ECONOMIC GROWTH
- Danger threshold
- 4.00%
- Desired threshold
- 6.00%
- Current level
- 8.95% (Q1 2026)
Real GDP growth was 8.95% in the first quarter of 2026, above the desired threshold of 6.00% and far clear of the 4.00% danger level. The figure is provisional: Geostat revises recent quarters, so the margin above the desired threshold may narrow when the revised estimate arrives. Quarterly growth is also the most volatile of the six series, and a single quarter at this level does not by itself establish that activity will stay in the comfortable range. Taken at face value, however, output is the strongest reading in the profile.
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT
- Danger threshold
- 2.00%
- Desired threshold
- 5.00%
- Current level
- 4.40% (2025)
Foreign direct investment grew 7.61% year over year in 2025 — positive, and therefore clear of the 0.00% danger threshold, but short of the 10.00% level that would count as comfortable. The practical reading is acceptable rather than reassuring: capital is still arriving, and the ratio sits in the middle band where a single weak year would push it toward the danger line. Unlike the fiscal and debt panels, this one is not a domestic accounting outcome but an external judgement on Georgia as a destination, which makes it worth watching more closely than its middling position suggests. It carries no information about the composition or durability of the inflows.
COMPETITIVENESS
- Danger threshold
- -4.00%
- Desired threshold
- -1.00%
- Current level
- -1.82% (Q1 2026)
The current account balance was -1.82% of GDP on a trailing four-quarter basis in the first quarter of 2026, between the desired -1.00% and the danger -4.00%, and nearer the desired end of that band. A deficit of this size is ordinarily financed without difficulty, and it is a long way from the range in which external adjustment becomes forced. It does mean, though, that the economy continues to require net external financing every quarter, which is where this panel connects to the liquidity reading. Read on its own, competitiveness is a watch item rather than a pressure point.
LIQUIDITY
- Danger threshold
- 1.00
- Desired threshold
- 2.00
- Current level
- 0.84 (Q1 2026)
Reserves covered 0.84 of short-term external debt in the first quarter of 2026 — below the 1.00 danger threshold and well short of the desired 2.00. In plain terms, official reserves are smaller than the stock of external debt falling due within a year, so near-term obligations depend on rollover rather than on buffers. This is the only one of the six ratios in the range that warrants active concern, and it is the channel through which a shift in the cost or availability of external funding would be felt first. For a treasury function managing Georgian exposure, this is the number to track between quarters.
EXTERNAL DEBT
- Danger threshold
- 50.00%
- Desired threshold
- 25.00%
- Current level
- 31.75% (Q1 2026)
Net external debt was 31.75% of GDP in the first quarter of 2026, comfortably inside the 50.00% danger threshold but above the desired 25.00%. The stock itself is not the problem: this is a middle-band reading that many comparable economies would accept without comment. Read alongside the reserve cover ratio, composition matters more than size — a moderate debt stock with short maturities and thin reserve backing behaves worse under stress than a larger stock with longer maturities. On its own, this panel is stable rather than a source of pressure.
Risk profile conclusion
Read together, the six ratios describe an economy whose flows are strong and whose external buffers are not. The budget balance and real GDP growth sit in the range that needs no management; foreign direct investment, the current account and the net external debt stock occupy the middle band where they should be monitored rather than acted upon; and reserve cover of short-term external debt is the single reading past the danger threshold. That combination points to moderate overall risk concentrated almost entirely in external liquidity rather than in solvency or activity: a change in the terms on which Georgia refinances short-term external obligations would register long before it appeared in the deficit or in output. Both caveats belong with the assessment — the first-quarter national accounts are provisional and subject to revision, and this profile carries one observation per ratio, so it reports levels rather than trends.