On 23 July 2014, during the plenary session of the Parliamentary Committee, the Minister of Finance of Georgia, Nodar Khaduri, stated that in total, GEL 416.2 million more was paid in pensions and GEL 158.3 million more was spent on healthcare which was a 57.1% growth since 2011.

FactCheck

took interest in Mr Khaduri’s statement and verified its accuracy.

In order to check the credibility of the statement FactCheck

compared the data given in the 2011 budget implementation report with the data of the same document of 2013 (the Minister of Finance presented the report to the Parliament). In total, GEL 987.472 million was allocated for pensions in the 2011 budget plan with the amount of individual pensions equal to GEL 100. According to the 2011 budget implementation report, GEL 973.324 million was paid in pensions. The 2013 budget plan allocated GEL 1,146.7 million for pensions and according to the budget implementation report of the same year, GEL 1,148.8 million was actually spent.

According to the aforementioned data, GEL 175.476 million more was spent for pensions in 2013 as compared to 2011 which constitutes an 18% growth.

In total, GEL 371.906 million was allocated for healthcare in the 2011 budget and GEL 362.528 million was actually spent. The healthcare funding for 2013 amounted to GEL 684.938. According to the 2013 budget implementation report, the actual spending was equal to GEL 481.335 million.

The aforementioned data suggest that GEL 118.807 million more was spent on healthcare in 2013 as compared to 2011 which constitutes a 32.77% growth.

It should be pointed out that a significant part of the healthcare budget of 2013 was allocated for the state health insurance programme. Approximately GEL 500 million was allocated for this programme; however, the actual spending was equal to GEL 239.515.

For additional information FactCheck

looked into the pension and healthcare spending statistics from 2004 to 2013.

Chart 1:  Money Allocated for Pensions from 2004 to 2013 (GEL) million)

According to Chart 1, the lowest amount of money – GEL 303 million was allocated for pensions in 2004 while the largest amount of money – GEL 1,161 million was spent in 2012.

Chart 2:  Healthcare Spending from 2004 to 2013 (GEL) million)

As we can see from Chart 2, the lowest amount of money spent on healthcare was GEL 147 million in 2004. In the following years the healthcare budget grew and amounted to GEL 481 million in 2013.

Conclusion

The first part of Mr Khaduri’s statement is false as, according to the budget implementation reports of 2011 and 2013, pension funds in 2013 increased by GEL 175 million and not GEL 416 million as compared to 2011. This constituted an 18% growth.

As for healthcare spending, the Minister’s information is, once again, not accurate. In total GEL 118 million (and not GEL 158 million) more was spent on healthcare in 2013 as compared to 2011 and it constituted a 33% growth.

As we can see, even though the growth in both pension funds and healthcare spending is clear, the numbers stated by the Minister significantly differ from the actual data.

We conclude that Nodar Khaduri’s statement: “We paid GEL 416.2 million more in pensions and spent GEL 158.3 million more on healthcare. This is a 57.1% growth since 2011,” is MOSTLY FALSE.