Three months ago the government program was publicized through media after being adopted by the RA National Assembly
Besides that the program has also been installed on the web page of the government and the interested ones could not only read that but also make remarks. Former RA Prime Minister, Hrant Bagratyan has also read the government program and has made many remarks. Bagratyan told us that he has sent his 15-page recommendations to the government and is going to publicize those through the media shortly. The former Prime Minister thinks that this is not a serious and deep document because there were no serious experts to oppose it. “There are no sufficient forces in the parliament to oppose this government and re-elaborate a serious and productive program,” says Bagratyan. “As there is no objection all kinds of documents are adopted as “melted oil”. I wouldn’t say that it’s fully useless but it has many shortcomings. First it didn’t say what the government is going to do in order to raise the tax collection in relation to the GDP by making it from 14% to 23%. The national tax level should reach up to 26%.Of course the government has an objective to annually increase the GDP-taxes relations by 0.3-0.4%. Even if you don’t do anything for that you will have the mentioned increase because there have been structural changes in the economy. Besides that soon the agriculture sector will also be taxed. Under such circumstances during 5 ears the tax level can reach from 14% to 15.5-16%. This means that the government is going to do anything serious.” In parallel with criticizing the government program Bagratyan couldn’t resist to criticize the incumbent government. By doing so Bagratyan couldn’t pass the issue of having 2.5 billion budget in 2008. “The important thing is not the numbers. The government must explain at the expense of what the increase is registered,” says Bagratyan. “In my opinion the main problem is that the economy, business are mingled with the government. Of course the greatest businessmen in our country are now the president, MPs and ministers. 86 out of 130 MPs are businessman. The businesses outside this framework only make a little part of that. If the government decides to increase the budget they must tax each other. The only way of developing the country is that they quit their businesses. Only when I see these objectives included in the government program I’ll say they are actually going to improve something. If the program said that the government is going to apply to the Prosecutor’s Office or the Constitutional Court so that they investigate the businesses of every single official I’d say that there is hope for improvement.” Mr. Bagratyan doesn’t think that this government program is totally empty. Of course there are certain things that it’s worth consenting with but when he sees all those statistical data and nothing else he gets embarrassed. “Let me bring remarkable examples. The government program decides to open 105.000 workplaces,” says Bagratyan. “According to the statistics service we only have 66.000 unemployed. The question is why do we need so many workplaces? The authors of this program should have been more careful with the numbers to make sure they match. There are dozens of similar omissions. It’s not good to disqualify the government program like that. I think that during its activity the government will find the capacity to understand those issues. And the issues include them – the government officials. They should either be in business or in government. When the statesman acquires a business the latter kills him like cancer. So they should get rid of businesses.” This time Bagratyan decided to count on his won the GDP of Armenia. He found out that it is actually so much less than the official data. He also found out that the statistics service at least twice exaggerates the economic growth of RA. “When they announce 13% growth divide that number into two and you will find the actual growth,” says Bagratyan. The government program is presented through the sectors of economy. Bagratyan calls those sectors “lolo”. “The whole banking policy is a “lolo”. No one knows what’s going to be done to develop this sector. There is an idea copied from the documents of 1992, according to which it is planned to make Armenia the financial center of the region. But how can they when they are checking the monetary transfers of every single person in Armenia? The greatest example is Alexander Arzumanyan’s detention. In the end they found out that nothing is wrong with that transfer. But I wish to ask them something else. How did you find out that money was transferred to that particular person? Because about 5 years ago together with the initiative of the CB of Armenia the government has adopted the law on fight against financing for the purposes of terrorism and criminal monetary transfers. Every single transfer is checked. This law kills democracy and contradicts the constitution. Do you the CC will speak against this? No. All the members of the CC and the Prosecutor’s Office have restaurants and cafes. That’s why I am saying that the statesmen must be kept away from business. This should have been the first provision of the government program.”