The RA ministry of economy and finances has its annual report on “RA public debt” as of January 1, 2006. Our society is paying close attention to this. However, the political parties are indifferent. The reason for this is the fact that our government is used to borrowing credits. One can see that when looking at the structure of Armenian foreign laons. Before 1997 ,most of the foreign loans covered trade credits. In 2005, it covered 98% of the total capacity of foreign loans taken. Last year, the Armenian government didn’t borrow any trade credits from other countries and institutions. Furthermore, last year our government covered a part of such credits it had taken before ($13 million). As a rule, privilege credits are taken on the basis of certain terms. First, the country is given a right not to pay any interest rates for a while (3-7 years). Second, the country starts covering the borrowing after the mentioned period. You may say that Armenia has been taking loans for the past 15 years. In spite of that, we have to confess that in this field, the government is much experienced. As of 2006, the RA foreign public debt covers $1.099.200k. 84% of the mentioned sum was given to the Armenian government (or guaranteed by the government). As for the remaining 16%, it is the debt of the RA Central Bank. As to whether this proportion is justified or not, that’s a different story. According to the economical statistics, the Central Bank is covering its share of foreign debt well. In 2003 the Central Bank had the biggest debt share-$203 million. This year the Central Bank redeemed a part of the mentioned debt and currently it’s $176,4 million only. As for the capacities of our foreign public debt from the macroeconomical point of view, it’s doing fine. According to the economical statistics, from this view the most successful year was 1999. In 1999 the RA foreign public debt capacity covered 47% of GDP of that year. Economists say that if this percentage is over 50%, it means that something’s wrong with the economy. Now we are not faced with such a danger because our foreign public debt covers 22% of our GDP. This might be considered as a result of rapid economical growth if we didn’t continue borrowing new credits again. In 2005, Armenia made 7 new contracts for borrowing credits. The statistics of our foreign public debt show that things are not looking too good for the relationship between Armenia and its strategic ally Russia. Furthermore, it may turn very bad. We don’t owe anything to Russia any more. This is good for Armenia because Russia was the only country that refused to prolong the deadline and took as much interest rates as it could. Things got better in 2005. That year, after paying back the last 3 million, Russia announced that Armenia had covered all its outstanding debts to Russia.
During the past couple of years, domestic public debt is growing (domestic public debt is the governmental debt in national currency). In 2004, it covered 41,5 billion dram, but in 2005 it went up to 51,3 billion. There is a positive factor here too. First, it is good that now our government is able to issue mid-term and long-term governmental obligations. The government provided money for higher interest rates in 2004 than it did in 2005 (2004 – 9%, 2005 – 7,3%). The fact that the national currency is growing in its price supports the mentioned process. It is a real tragedy for the production system of the economy but, in spite of that, it supports financial processes. On the one hand, this cannot be considered as a good achievement in the real sector of economy. On the other hand, it is a good achievement on the part of the government, which now provides loans in RA national currency for more than 9 years.
We can compare Armenia’s domestic public debt with the foreign one. In fact, there are positive developments in the field of our public debt. In spite of the mentioned positive developments, our government continues to borrow credits and doesn’t implement economical stipulation policy.