M. Saakashvili: Armenia was ahead of Georgia for the first time in  terms of GDP per capita, this has not happened since the time of  Tigran the Great

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.