Government intervention must be minimized
If the current economy, legislation and mindset still have somewhat positive trends, then that is coming from the reforms undertaken 15 years ago," former NA Deputy Chairman Ara Sahakyan told "A1+".
According to him, everything turned around and stopped and the signal for that was Robert Kocharyan's announcement when he said nobody can be involved in business without violations, distortion or crime.
"He declared the business environment as a distrustful one where there can always be criminals. He influenced them by ensuring perfect control along with state structures on the one hand and depriving civil society, the media and other institution from the opportunity to work autonomously on the other."
According to Ara Sahakyan, the government has an extremely large and inadmissible amount of control over public life, including the economy.
"If Tigran Sargsyan's government reduced government intervention in economy to a minimum, that would have been a great achievement," says Ara Sahakyan, adding that in addition to its regulating function, that is, gathering taxes and fines and regulating funding and subsidies, the government should fulfill another function.
"Economy is very much like a biological organism. When you place it in a healthy environment, it regulates itself, perfects itself and develops. Government intervention with good intentions and the gathering of budget through vulgar ways and underground causes damage to the economy. Economy must be free from needless government intervention. The government should only participate at the legislative level; otherwise, that is an unlawful way of participating and only disturbs," said Mr. Sahakyan.
The easiest resistance to the economic crisis was in Belarus where government intervention in economy is the most tangible and prominent. In response to this, Ara Sahakyan said: "The good state of economy in Belarus is due to cheap power-generators from Russia, as well as the sale of Belarus goods in the Russian market which has placed Belarus in a so-called privileged state."
Armenia also receives power-generators for privileged prices, but "the economy is not as good as that of Belarus." Armenia wasn't able to resist the economic crisis as Belarus did either.
"The main reason for our misery lies in the hands of our authorities. The government has larger and inadmissible opportunities of having an influence on the society. That is the reason why our society is not developing. It is not adjusting, identifying its problems and that is the reason why we blame the government for everything. We don't blame ourselves. The government pressures the society in a way that it has turned into a totalitarian system," Ara Sahakyan told "A1+".
