The policy of relying on external donations or loans is already past: Serzh Sargsyan

Armenia will continue recording accelerated economic growth relying on its own capacities, President of Armenia, leader of the RPA Serzh Sargsyan mentioned in his speech at the 16th convention of the party.

“We are not satisfied with the present indicators, otherwise there would be no need to speak about drastic changes. Moreover, shaping domestic capacities and creating economic potentials had its price. We added our foreign debt, but the debt fulfilled its main task, which is first of all the economy withstood the unfavorable financial situation and secondly most of the foreign debt was invested in such long-term infrastructural projects as NorthSouth road and the security of the state. Naturally, the debt was not spent on current expenditures,” Serzh Sargsyan said.

According to the President, the changes expected in the coming years will be a turning point. “We have reached the point where though we have to think about saving money, restricting and adopting a conservative budget, we have managed to effectively withstand the challenges, ensure economic growth, raise the competitiveness of the economy, and expand export volumes. The policy of just relying on external donations loans is already in the past,” he added.

Serzh Sargsyan noted that in many countries the financial crisis caused a lot of people to appear in the streets. “Or a drastic cut of state reserves took place, even the pension funds were directed to stabilize the situation, or made a great use of the reserves from oil revenues.

The analysis of “Reuters” agency is worth mentioning, which stated Armenia’s flexible and decisive policy against financial crisis, noting that Armenia has set a regional record of the number of taking anti-crisis decisions. During 2016 Armenia lowered refinancing rate for 9 times,” the President said, noting that the rate has reached 6.5% against 10.5 in 2015.