Author: Emil Lazarian

The closer the elections are, the more the political power opens the state’s pockets to solve its political problems.

The other day, they came up with another pre-election initiative. just 2-2.5 months before the elections, the Minister of Economy, Gevorg Papoyan, hastened to announce that farmers will soon be granted zero percent agricultural loans.

Naturally, there are no zero interest loans. This means that the burden of paying the interest on these loans is fully borne by the state budget. They will be subsidized at the expense of the taxes paid by all of us.

It is clear to everyone why they decided right now that they should provide interest-free loans to the peasants when there are elections. with this, the political power solves political problems for itself, at the expense of state funds, attracting the peasants to vote for the ruling power during the elections.

This obvious pre-election initiative will be presented as support for the agricultural sector, but when the initiative implemented at the expense of state funds is announced right on the eve of the elections, it inevitably takes on a political tone as an impulse aimed at the electoral period and a targeted intervention aimed at certain groups of society.

Providing zero-interest loans, which implies subsidizing interest at the expense of the state budget, actually means that public funds are used to improve the financial conditions of a certain social group at the very moment when that group needs to make a political decision.

Such a coincidence, even without direct evidence, raises a legitimate question: is this a direct support for agriculture or a pre-election bribe to farmers?

On the eve of the elections, they are going to interest the peasants with interest-free loans, when without it, the peasants are squealing under the loans. They boast that they have implemented projects worth billions of drams in agriculture, but there has been a decline in agriculture for years. Meanwhile, at one time Nikol Pashinyan announced that they are going to develop agriculture at a revolutionary pace in Armenia.

“The use of new technologies should also be widely spread in the field of agriculture, in this case also having as a strategic goal the sharp reduction of the number of uncultivated agricultural lands and, ultimately, the exclusion of the existence of such lands,” Nikol Pashinyan made this statement almost 8 years ago, when he assumed the position of the head of the government. In these 8 years, the governments and political authorities led by him have achieved success in terms of developing agriculture at a revolutionary pace and reducing the amount of uncultivable land, not to mention eliminating the existence of such land, is in front of everyone’s eyes.

Even today, almost 50 percent of arable land in Armenia remains uncultivated. According to the latest data, only 220-230 thousand of the available 446 thousand hectares of arable land are under cultivation.

Nothing has changed here in recent years, instead, the authorities are trying to create the impression that they have achieved great success in agriculture. They think that by building several greenhouses, they are developing agriculture. Eight years ago, the share of agriculture in GDP was much higher than it is now.

The weight of agriculture has almost halved in eight years. 2017 It was 15 percent of GDP, last year it was only 7.9 percent.

It is so, because in 2018 after that, agriculture was almost always in decline. In 2021, the reduction of the gross output of the sector reached about 8 percent. 2022 to some extent recovered, but foundations for sustainable growth were not created.

In the following years, the same trends were maintained, without creating an opportunity to compensate the losses of the previous period.

This situation shows that the management of the agricultural sector has failed for years, on the eve of the elections they decided to bribe the villagers with interest-free loans in order to vote for the ruling political force.

Loan interest subsidization means that the state takes over the financial burden, reducing the borrower’s expenses at the expense of the budget. But they forget that the problems of peasants and agriculture are not limited only to financial ones. Inefficiencies in irrigation systems, limited access to markets, product sales problems, and climate risks continue to limit the development of the sector. Under these conditions, even zero-percentage loans cannot be a guarantee for increasing the farmer’s income.

Moreover, it can have the opposite effect. Giving in to the temptation of interest-free loans, people can find themselves under a new credit and debt burden. With this, the debt burden of many people can deepen at a faster pace. Besides that, today the peasant is heavily burdened with loans.

So, the interest-free agricultural loan, which they are going to offer on the eve of the elections under the name of “free” assistance to the peasants, can actually cause new risks and problems for the peasants. Not taking into account that providing “free” loans is also problematic in terms of the budget. That means an increase in budget expenses. And where will they get the money from? Naturally, they will cut from other expenses that have less political significance and influence.

All this happens at the moment when the political processes enter the pre-election active phase. Everyone understands that such “random” coincidences do not just happen.

HAKOB KOCHARYAN

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Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that confidence is needed to support negotiations and mediation in the conflict settlement in the Middle East.

During the telephone conversation, the leaders of the two countries discussed military operations and efforts to stop the conflict in the region. Sharif briefed Pezeshkian on Pakistan’s diplomatic contacts with the United States and the Gulf states, the statement said.

In a post on X, the Iranian president appealed to the countries of the region, stating that if they want development and security, they should not allow Tehran’s opponents to “wag a war on your lands.”

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The ongoing military operations around Iran and its possible escalation are a direct threat to the South Caucasus, as well as to Armenia. The intelligence services of the USA and Israel probably did not calculate that a blitzkrieg war would not be possible, and in fact, it has been a month since the war, tens of billions of dollars have been spent on both sides. The Iranian side was prepared for this scenario of development, and they tried to replace each neutralized political or military figure with another one. 168TVof « expressed such an opinion during the program Gor Gevorgyan, former deputy of RA NA, orientalist.

“The war is a direct threat to all regional projects. If the situation around Iran becomes more complicated, then, for example, the launch of TRIPP will be questioned. It would be very good if TRIPP became a geopolitical factor for Armenia, but it is primarily considered as an economic factor according to the shares. If the USA is the initiator of TRIPP and thereby ensures partial stability and peace, then this can be questioned at some point,” said the expert.

“In the recently declassified US intelligence document, for example, there is no provision that Armenia will benefit from the security component guaranteed by the US within the framework of TRIP. Conventional and short-term peace and stability should not be presented as cheap dopamine. It is not worth telling a section of our society, which is misled on various issues, that this is a lasting and lasting peace.

This is the biggest deception in the sense that only those regions and countries around which there is no potential source of conflict stand out for the duration of peace, such as, for example, individual countries of continental Europe,” said Gor Gevorgyan.

According to the public figure, any state, especially in our explosive region, should make it imperative to unite the people around an ideological pillar and increase military capabilities. “Our area is the South Caucasus, the Greater Middle East, where you cannot approach developments from a romantic and dreamy point of view.

History has shown that even the permanence of peace in the Arab countries of the Gulf is not guaranteed, and even the presence of the military bases of the state that gave them a security guarantee did not allow them to avoid these strikes. Psychologically, we should be ready for developments that are not desirable for us. The scope of the war is increasing, so the challenges will also increase.”

“Unfortunately, force, as a superior tool and formula, finds much more place in international relations after the 44-day war in Artsakh. And if the power factor becomes the engine of international law, a chaotic situation is created. Small states can always escape if there are poles of power around which you can shape your foreign political agenda, your security formula and environment,” said Gor Gevorgyan.

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