Armenia grappling with complicated socio-economic situation
By Jamila Babayeva
The official statistics of the first four months of 2014 portray Armenia as country struggling with a complicated socio-economic situation.
Armenia's population keeps declining. The number of population of the country stood at 3,012,400 as of April 2014, while the number was 3,028,000 during the same period of 2013, official statistics show.
Thus, the number of population has decreased by 15,600 during the past year.
Population decline has led to the reduction of bread production in the country. Some 98.1 thousand tons of bread were produced in Armenia during the first four months of 2014, which is by 0.3 percent less than the same period of the last year.
Local media say the decline in bread consumption is due to a decline in the population.
The official statistics for the first four months of 2014 also confirmed that the inflation keeps increasing. The inflation rate was 4.4 percent in January to May. Especially tariffs for services increased by 8.5 percent, while prices of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products rose by 7.3 percent.
The statistics on foreign debt also give us an unpleasant picture of the country, where even the social problems are solved by foreign countries' loans.
Armenia's state debt was almost $5 billion as of April 30, 2014, while external debt amounted to $1 billion 887.918 million.
The National Statistics Service's data on foreign investment differs from the previous one, as the state body used the new methodology for the calculation of foreign investment.
Local media reported that the new methodology makes impossible to find out if the investment increase or decrease.
"Armenia faced rapid decrease in foreign investments during the last years, and the sharp change of the methodology is driven by the desire somehow to hide the decline," media report said.
The National Statistics Service is the only state body which publishes figures on the real miserable situation in Armenia. It seems that the authorities have forced the national services to hide the real statistics data.
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