Armenia's state debt grows fivefold faster than GDP
By Rashid Shirinov
The state debt of Armenia grows five times faster than the GDP, the Secretary of the “Tsarukyan” bloc, Vahe Enfiajyan, revealed this reality addressing the Armenian Parliament on July 6.
Armenia’s state debt was $3.1 billion in 2009, and now the figure is about $6 billion, that is almost doubled, Enfiajyan noted during discussions of execution of the state budget of Armenia in 2016.
“Meanwhile, the GDP increased by only 20 percent over the same period” he added.
He stressed that in dollar terms, Armenia’s GDP increased even less that by 20 percent due to the depreciation of the Armenian dram. Thus, two years ago Armenia’s GDP was $11.2 billion, in 2015 – $10.5 billion, and $10.3 billion last year.
Armenia ended 2016 with the state debt of $5.9 billion, and today the state debt accounts for some 54% of the GDP.
Finance Minister Vardan Aramyan previously said that in late 2017, Armenia's national debt would reach $6.250 billion. Such a large state debt indicates that the government should sound the alarm and change the situation, but the Armenian authorities are incapable of that.
Meanwhile, Head of the Central Bank of Armenia Artur Javadyan made some nonsense statements revealing another problem of the country.
Javadyan, talking to reporters, said that Armenia has no problems with gold reserves, but then, answering the question whether the country has gold reserves, he said: "No, we do not need gold reserves.” Thus, head of Armenia’s Central Bank caused grins on the faces of the journalists.
In past, Armenia had few gold reserves, but then the government decided to sell them to save the country’s poor state budget. Thus, in 2003, Armenia sold all 1.4 tons of gold reserves. At that time, the price of gold was extremely low. However, the Armenian economy could collapse at any moment and therefore, the Armenian government sold all the gold reserves as it had no other choice to save the state budget.
Journalists also asked Javadyan why the Armenian population keeps leaving the country. He once again came up with a silly answer, saying: “People move from everywhere to more affluent places. People from Poland or France also leave, for example to the United States.”
However, Armenian reporters gave a good response on Javadyan’s words. “People are leaving because the rich in Armenia continue getting richer, and the poor become even poorer,” they said.
Unofficial Armenian sources note that the real number of poor in Armenia has long ago exceeded one million people. Thus, the corrupt Armenian officials live like kings while one third of Armenians live in poverty and cannot find money for a living. Therefore, Armenians who have enough money to leave, move out of the country with the hope of never coming back to collapsing Armenia.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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