Azernews.Az

By Gunay Hasanova

Armenia is going to apply a new economic program, which doesn’t seem very promising to end the economic crisis in the country.

Armenia’s National Assembly approved the new government’s policy program on October 21.

Prior to the voting at the parliament, Head of opposition Orinats Yerkir party’s faction in the parliament Heghine Bisharyan noted that the program is very similar to the previous government’s program.

Bisharyan claimed that the focus should be the fight against monopolies and informal sector, further mentioning that the faction did not agree with many of its provisions, and therefore would abstain from voting.

Mikael Melkumyan from the Prosperous Armenia party’s parliamentary faction stressed that the party can not share the political responsibility for the program and its MPs will not participate in the vote.

The parliamentarian from another oppositional Armenian National Congress, Levon Zurabyan stated that the program does not attempt to address the country’s major economic and other problems lacking also concrete estimates of the situation and models of economic development.

"It contains only a set of tools that the government plans to use in its activities. The program lacks any financial or economic indicator, perhaps, because the experience of previous programs shows that they are not fulfilled. There are no GDP, investment or other economic indicators. The impression is that this government was set up to create a positive impression for the population before the elections,” Zurabyan said.

Earlier, the local newspaper "Zhoghovurd" compared the new program with the program of the previous government headed by Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan presented in 2014, in which the rate of annual economic growth has been specified in the amount of 5%, but, as time has shown, the program was not implemented.

The program of Karen Karapetyan government doesn’t contain such “promises”, therefore, no one can blame them for the failure, says the message.

Meanwhile, Armenia’s external debt is growing, as well as the budget deficit. Moreover, the economic growth is significantly lower than it was foreseen. The state debt of Armenia has already amounted to $5.36 billion as of the end of the first half of 2016. Noteworthy, the forecasted GDP in 2016 amounts to 5.443 trillion drams. Consequently, by the end of the first half-year, the national debt of Armenia made up 46.7 percent of GDP, which is quite risky for the country’s economy.

The unemployment rate in Armenia is still the highest among the CIS countries, making up 19.3 percent, and due to the wrong structure of the national economy, new vacancies do not seem to come up in near future.

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Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova

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