During Hovik Abrahamyan’s tenure state debt increased by USD 1 billion (video)
During the tenure of Premier Hovik Abrahamyan, the state debt increased by about USD 1 billion. According to the words of economist Vilen Khachatryan, the issue of unemployment hasn’t been solved, too. 1/3 of the population continues to remain poor. At the same time the economist notes, that Hovik Abrahamyan inherited a country in a very bad economic condition; there were high tempos of state debt increase approaching up to USD 4 billion, there was some retardation of economic growth, there were concrete economic difficulties transferred from the financial-economic situation. “Ensuring high growth tempos during these one and a half years was not a success, slow growth tempos had their impact, external economic factor was taken into consideration, but, anyway, inner economic factors mustn’t be excluded,” noted Vilen Khachatryan. He says that during the recent period the government of Hovik Abrahamyan was the only one, which had to establish a budget, by decreasing budget revenues. “They had to lower the threshold of deficit, they expected 2.5 percent, in the yearend it became more than 4 percent, they had to involve more debts to cover the deficit, as there were no revenues, for ensuring the budget there was a need to ensure the budget revenue.” The economist notes that the only success was the direction of the exportation, but, “Though our exportation has serious quality drawbacks; we are led by a model of banana county.” Vilen Khachatryan states that compared to the previous years, importation has been decreased by USD 1 billion 170 million. It means that every month our population consumed less within the frames of USD 100 million. The economist also singles out this year’s two shocks, April War and political events in July, which, he says, brought forward economic shocks. In reply to the question what he expects from premier’s candidate Karen Karapetyan, the economist noted that he won’t assess him from a human standpoint, but he will follow what kind of projects he will carry out, whether he will be able to ensure outflow of capital, increase in investments or not.
