FORMER MINISTER OF FINANCE CONSIDERS CURRENT GOVERNMENT’S POLICY OF EXPANSION AS CORRECT

Noyan Tapan
July 6, 2009

YEREVAN, JULY 6, NOYAN TAPAN. The former Armenian minister of
finance Levon Barkhudarian (1993-1997 and 1999-2000) considers the
current government’s policy of expansion as correct, in particular,
its attemp to prevent an economic decline or make it smoother by
attracting financial resources from outside.

L. Barkhudarian said during the July 3 meeting at the National Press
Club that considerable resources have been given to the Armenian
government. This will enable to implement the budgets of this year
and 2010 with a little more deficit and to help the economy and
small and medium busness. At the same time he underlined that two
factors hinder Armenia from overcoming the economic crisis: first,
the slow process of reforms in the government system, including the
low efficiency of the anticorruption policy, second, the existence
of monopolies, including the imperfect competition environment.

As regards the economic crisis which followed the collapse of the
Soviet Union in the early 1990s, L. Barkhudarian noted that the
conditions of that time and the current conditions are different. At
the time there was a war in Karabakh, a blockade was imposed on
Armenia, the country had problems with power supply, and GDP decline
made 50%. Besides, there was no financial assistance from international
organizations and other countries, and enterprises received no support
from the state. "Despite all this, I regard that hard period as grand,
in a certain sense, those were the best years when the people was
united with the authorities and this unity resulted in our victories,"
L. Barkhudarian said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress