Tengiz Sharmanashvili: “The Georgian army is receiving record funding.”

Verdict: FactCheck concludes that Tengiz Sharmanashvili’s statement is FALSE.

The planned 2024 budget of the Ministry of Defence amounts to GEL 1.380 billion which, contrary to claims, does not mark a record as funding for the institution in 2007-2008 constituted GEL 1.5 billion.

Furthermore, the budgets in 2006 and 2009 also exceeded that of 2024 when considering purchasing power.

Another metric for evaluating the volume of funding is expenditure relative to the GDP which currently constitutes 1.6%. For comparison, the ratio was 16-times higher, amounting to 3.6% on average from 2005 to 2020.

Considering the discrepancies, FactCheck concludes that Tengiz Sharmanashvili’s statement is FALSE.

Analysis

A member of the parliamentary majority, Tengiz Sharmanashvili, during his speech in the parliament on 30 April regarding the military claimed: “It is a fact that the Georgian army has never received a budget this high in the history of Georgia, never of this magnitude or scale.”

The funding for the Ministry of Defence surged shortly after the Rose Revolution. Particularly, the budget of the aforementioned institution constituted GEL 54 million in 2003, GEL 160 million in 2004, GEL 358 million in 2005, later reaching GEL 1.5 billion in 2007 and 2008.

The funding allocated for defence witnessed a substantial decline of 44% following the war, a trend that persisted in the subsequent years. Namely, the budget during the time period from 2010 to 2012 did not even constitute half of that allocated in 2007 and 2008.

The budget of the Ministry of Defence once again exceeded a billion in 2022. Additionally, the institution should incur expenditure of almost GEL 1.4 billion (GEL 1.380 billion) according to 2024 projections which is a record in nominal terms over the past 16 years but still falls behind the figures recorded in 2007 and 2008.

Furthermore, when taking inflation into account, it becomes evident that the GEL 684 million allocated in 2006 surpasses GEL 1.7 billion in 2024 (specifically, GEL 1.727 billion) whilst the GEL 870 million allocated in 2009 also comes close to GEL 1.7 billion (specifically, GEL 1.674 billion) in purchasing power terms. Using a similar methodology, the funds allocated for defence in 2008 would surpass GEL 3.2 billion in 2024 and those allocated in 2007 would surpass GEL 3.4 billion, marking the respective differences of 2.4-fold and 2.5-fold.

Calculating expenditure relative to the GDP provides a more accurate metric for evaluating the magnitude of funding. Whilst the funds allocated for defence in the USA is higher than the entire Georgian economy 30-fold, they constitute 3.7% of the country’s economy. Despite the non-official standard of NATO specifying that member countries should allocate a minimum of 2% of their GDP to defence, more than half of the member countries do not adhere to this standard.

The funding allocated for defence in Georgia constituted 1.4% of the GDP in 2004, reaching 3.3% in 2005 and further increasing to 9.2% in 2007. The ratio was significantly high in 2008, standing at 8.5%. However, the statistic declined to 5.3% in 2009, a trend persisting in the subsequent years. The figure amounted to 3% in 2012, 2.6% in 2013, crossed the 2% mark in 2018 and remains at 1.6% even today.

The funds allocated for defence relative to the GDP exceeded the 1.6%-mark 16 consecutive times during the period from 2005 to 2020, eight instances of which happened during Georgian Dream’s governance.

Graph 1: The Funding of the Ministry of Defence, Military Expenditure Relative to the GDP[1]

Source: Ministry of Finance of Georgia and the World Bank

Overall, the budget of the Ministry of Defence surpassed the 2024 mark twice in 2007 and 2008 in nominal terms, four times in the period from 2006 to 2009 in purchasing power terms and 16 times relative to the GDP from 2005 to 2020. Considering the discrepancies, FactCheck concludes that Tengiz Sharmanashvili’s statement is FALSE.