The economic activity rate or the structure of economic growth existing in Armenia for many years, is not accepted by acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
During today’s debate of the PM’s election in the Parliament, Pashinyan, who is the only candidate for PM, talked about the economic situation in Armenia in his remarks. “Our economic growth is mainly formed of components which allow us to say that our country is a mining-producing, agrarian country, a country, in fact, conducting bets, which is completely unacceptable. For instance, let’s look what happened in June when our economic activity rate reached an unprecedented high figure – 11.1%. The following took place: the World Cup was taking place that time, and it turns out that our people were busy in doing bets. These figures were recorded in our statistical service as a drastic growth in services, and we had nearly 5% economic activity rate growth within a month thanks to betting. Moreover, I want to draw your attention on the fact that the state revenues didn’t increase from this according to our tax code”, the acting PM said.
The next component, according to the acting PM, is the mining industry which has always been one of the pillars of export and production. “In fact, we have carried out this irrespective of any economic policy. If the international prices of metals, in particular those of copper and molybdenum, were high, we have demolished and exported our subsoil. And in fact, no added value has been created by this”, he said.
Commenting on the decline of the economic growth activity in September, Pashinyan said this decline occurred compared to the September of the previous year. “What happened during this period? The following took place: the Teghut mine, which was the pillar of our export and production, has just shut down. I didn’t and don’t consider it a positive pillar. But why it closed? Because many economic, engineering and management problems emerged. One of the greatest problems of our economy is that the situation, the activity of a company can bring fluctuations in our economic indicators”, Pashinyan said.
Agriculture is the next component forming Armenia’s economic growth. The acting PM said a great decline was also recorded in agricultural sector this year in September compared to the September of 2017. “But I want to draw your attention on the fact that during the 9 months of this year we recorded 20% export growth. This means that this year fruit-vegetables were exported from our country by more than 20% compared to the same period of the last year. But in general, there are major problems with agriculture statistics in our country that no one can confidently state that the figures presented in the agriculture sector are in accordance with the reality. Because we have multiple mechanisms for additions”, the acting PM said, adding that these additions are linked with the brandy production. “You know that an Armenian brandy is a brand, but, unfortunately, there are still companies in Armenia which produce non-Armenian brandy under the Armenian brandy brand”, he said, adding that this leads to inconsistencies in numbers.
Pashinyan also stated that there is a problem of under-fulfillment of the state budget spending. “The reason of this is very concrete and linked with our political line of anti-corruption fight, since in our opinion many programs are being implemented improperly, inefficiently, and our policy of anti-corruption fight has forced program implementers and the government to pay special attention to each program, which, of course, somehow restrains the expenditure part, which brings some economic effect with it”, Nikol Pashinyan said.