Who would care about Armenia’s economy?
People who attentively follow news stream should have noticed that media writes more about what is being said about the Armenia economy rather than what is being done.
Some people say it is the fault of journalists, but if we try to be objective about it, we will see that not much is done for the Armenian economy. Almost nothing is being done, especially after the holiday season. The first twenty days of 2013 have already passed. What has been done in the economy so far? In fact, nothing. The exchange rate of dollar is going up and down, and already nobody cares about it. Even sales of state bonds is not interesting to people. The production development platform (proposed by the minister of economy) and other similar senseless initiatives do not interest people. The only economic topic people were interested in was the story with vehicle technical check-up tickets. The only connection with the economy was the fact that the institution in charge of this process was the ministry of finance.
People are not interested even in international reports. For example, one of the recent publications of 168 Hours newspaper discussed the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report, which published data that were inconsistent with the commitments of the Armenian government. In particular, according to WB, in 2012 Armenia was expecting to have GDP growth at 6.8%, and in 2013, 2014 and 2015 they are forecasting 4.3%, 4.4% and 4.4%. However, according to the Armenian government, in 2012 the GDP growth target would be 7%, and in 2012-2017 – 5-7%. This means that WB does not believe in the Armenian government and the Armenian government does not notice WB’s report.
The government officials did not deem it important to discuss this report (even though they praise WB, especially before asking for money), but indeed they were so attentive to another report. The prime-minister started the first session of the government in 2013 with discussion of Heritage Foundation’s and Wall Street Journal’s report on economic freedom indices 2013. “Today I want to introduce the report on economic indices 2013 published by Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal. In this area we have improved our position, which gives me hope that we will improve the situation even more with our reforms. This index is important for investors and certainly it will have significant importance for us too,” said prime-minister Tigran Sargsyan. Armenia improved its position in the report with 0.6 points and was in the 17th position among 177 countries.
168 Hours’ previous publications have discussed this index of economic freedom, and also specified the fact that the government officials were feeling very happy about it. It was also written that formally to have a free economy does not necessarily mean to have good economy. Generally there is a big debate about liberal economy because after the crisis many countries are moving toward protectionism for the purpose of providing good conditions for their producers.
The report contains ideas that have nothing to do with Armenia. For example, the report rites that due to Armenia economic diversification the economic dynamism has been shifted, the economic development of the past years have resulted in reduction of poverty and unemployment, efforts have been made to cut down expenses of the government and fight against corruption has improved. This is in case when even the official statistics of Armenia tells a different thing. According to the statistics report 2010, the poverty level has hit a record at the level of 35.8%. There is no need to discuss emigration because people usually do not leave from a country where there are jobs. It is not quite clear where the authors of the report found information about efficient fight against corruption. There is a section in the report, which is close to the reality and tells about huge influence of interested business groups through close relations with political groups.
It is awkward that the mentioned two reports were the main focus of the media in the recent period. However, the first report by WB was ignored by the government. The other report about the index of economic freedom does not reflect the reality and not many people, apart from PM Tigran Sargsyan, really care about it.
Maybe most of the population does not have economic knowledge, many people intuitively feel what it is about and which one is important. That is the reason why the society is more curious about, for example, the murder of Mafioso Ded Hasan and other details about incidents in the criminal world rather than the economic situation in the country.
By Babken Tunyan
