Skopje, 23 November 2022 (MIA) - By the end of the year, the public debt will not even reach 60 percent of GDP, although we predicted it would be 65.6 percent, Finance Minister Fatmir Besimi said Wednesday before the Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee. Besimi called to speak immediately after the Chair of the Finance and Budget Committee, Bojan Stojanoski qualified the proposed budget for 2023 as historically the highest and unrealistic. “The preliminary projections are that the public debt will be 58.5 percent by the end of the year. For 2023, with a dose of reserve, I can say that it will be 60.6 percent, 62.1 percent or 60.9 percent, while in 2026 and 2027 it is projected at 58.4 or 57.8 percent of GDP. When we talk about the size of the Budget, it is mentioned that it is historically the largest. It is a fact, but every year we grow economically. What we are commenting here is more from the perspective of growth, the policies that will support growth and how the deficit will not increase. I think this draft budget makes it possible,” Besimi pointed out. Regarding Stojanoski's accusations that the country is the leader in the region in terms of poverty, the minister said that there are other figures. “I have other poverty figures from EUROSTAT, which have been going down for our country since 2015. The latter, for 2020, are 32.6 percent, which is less than Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey,” Besimi noted and concluded that the country has stable public finances, within the limits allowed in the medium term. dk/sk/