Armenian gov’t blames its citizens for economic failures
Rashid Shirinov
Armenia remains an unattractive country for foreign investors due to lack of an appropriate business environment and alarming level of corruption and monopoly in the country.
Foreign investments in Armenia decreased by 35 percent since early 2016 compared to the same period of 2015, Armenian Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper states, referring to data of the Armenian National Statistical Service.
In 2016, the volume of investments was1.7 billion drams ($3.5 million) instead of last-year’s 60.1 billion ($126 million). The figure is likely the greatest decline in foreign investments to the country in the history of Armenian government.
“It shows general state of our economy, which the government zealously tries to hide behind tweaked, buffed official lists,” the newspaper says.
Armenia urgently needs foreign investments, but the country's economic deadlock is ruining the government's plans to attract them.
The volume of private transfers to Armenia also continues to decline. The total amount of private transfers for April amounted to just 50.2 billion drams ($105 million) compared to 54.4 billion ($114 million) in April 2015.
The outflow of transfers vice versa increased. Thus, in April 2016, 36.1 billion drams ($75.5 million) left Armenia whilst the figure was 28 billion ($58.5 million) in the same month of 2015, Haykakan Zhamanak states.
Net inflow of private transfers in April made up 18.6 billion drams ($39 million). The figure of was 26.4 billion ($55.2 million) in the same period of 2015.
Furthermore, the Armenian population suffers from a high unemployment rate. The number of unemployment in the first quarter of 2016 made 19.3 percent of able-to-work population.
Meanwhile, Chief Treasurer of Armenia Atom Janjughazyan stated that a reduction of approximately 4 percent in the retail trade turnover is because citizens prefer to consume less and save more, Chorrord Ishkhanutyun, another Armenian newspaper writes.
The newspaper made a sarcastic statement on the subject: “We naively believed that the citizens have less money, so they spend little. It turns out that amount of money did not decrease -- people just prefer to save. That is, they become stingier. They all decided to go on a diet and eat little, therefore, the amount of food consumption decreased. And, in general, all figures, represented by the National Statistical Service are brilliant, just people are guilty! The unemployment rate rose because people are lazy; volumes of direct investment decreased as people become more cowardly - they have money, but are afraid to make investments. And the volume of migration grows as the curiosity to see what is in other countries has dramatically increased.”
--
Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz