The “exam session” of the Armenian government began on Monday. Ministers and heads of state-run corps are taking exams with the Armenian Prime Minister regarding the activities of the past year.
Last year, the ministers and other officials answered to journalists’ questions after the “exam”. That tradition won’t continue this year. As the government’s press service informed, the reason for that is the heavy schedule due to the fact that reports were handed in late.
Monday, apparently, was the Dashnaktsutyun’s day to submit the report. The Ministers of Health, Labor and Social Issues and Education and Sciences submitted their reports to Prime Minister Andranik Margarian. The Ministers of Environmental Protection, Transportation and Communication, Energy and Territorial Management were going to “step up to the plate” on Tuesday. The Armenian government will inform the mass media about the marks and the mass media, in turn, will inform the public.
Until then, let’s take a glimpse at the summary of last year’s economic marks, which will play an essential role in determining this year’s marks. Thus, based on the preliminary data of the National Statistics Service of Armenia (January 19, 2007), Armenia ended 2006 with a 13.4% economic growth. We have mentioned several times that the large part of the economic growth is due to the construction field (37.1%). Services have increased by 20.2%. Incomes have gone up by 20%. The average, nominal paycheck for workers on budget made up 45,130 drams and 77,883 for non-budget workers. The number of people who are officially registered as unemployed has decreased by 4400 and as of December 2006, there were 84,600 unemployed. Inflation was 5.2%. These are official statistics and many are inclined not to believe. However, even the official statistics don’t hide the sad image, which can be seen in other fields. Agriculture has only gone up by 4% and not only have volumes of industrial production not increased, rather they have reduced by 9%. The decrease in volumes of electricity says a lot about the decline in production. In 2006, 5,940,000 kilowatts/hour of energy were produced, compared to last year’s 5.9% mark.
As a result, the poorest marks were in circulation of foreign products. Last year, exports made up 1.004 billion dollars, while imports were 2.194 billion dollars. Not counting the number of diamonds, exports were 758.4 billion (6.7% growth) and imports were 1.971 billion (28.7% growth). So, it turns out that imports exceed exports by 4 times. The negative balance of foreign trade of Armenia makes up approximately 1.2 billion dollars. The average dram exchange rate to the dollar last year was 416.04. It is worth mentioning that 420 drams was foreseen as the exchange rate for 2006, whereas the predicted average dollar exchange rate for 2007 is 357 drams.