Answering to a question proposed by “Lragir.am” whether the government is not concerned about the currency exchange rate rapid changes during the recent weekend and whether such currency exchange rate change may not be a reason for financial shock in the market, which may become a national security issue, PM Serzh Sargsyan said, “The depreciation of dollar is a very concerning factor. You know that our economy is open and small, thus it is vulnerable. In order to make the picture clear, I will bring the following example: a storm in the ocean is first of all dangerous for small boats and ships. The storm is not so dangerous for big ships. The same can be said about us too. This rapid change in the world market is very dangerous for us. This is the first factor. The second factor is that in addition to all these problems there is another specific thing too. Our citizens receive huge money transfers from their relatives living in abroad, especially in the United States and Russia. This means that they receive that money in dollar. On the one hand, these people are faced with a difficult situation since the prices don’t go down, thus their money in dollar is becoming less in its worth, on the other hand, it becomes a reason for increase of the dram exchange rate since the capacity of dollar is growing. Certainly, the government is concerned and we are taking the necessary steps to help the problem, especially due to the fact that this depreciation of dollar does not support the export. As for this issue, we have a goal to enlarge our gross domestic product”. According to Serzh Sargsyan, the actions they are implementing to prevent those problems cannot bring to positive results during one or two months and there may be positive results only after a long period of time. “The most concerning thing was the fact that during one day the exchange rate went down by 20 dram. We are trying to solve the problem and it does not depend on the processes in the international markets, instead of that we should figure it out what the real result of such change was. We should try to find out whether any actions have been taken to affect our economy. We should find it out whether it was just a speculation to make money or there were other processes too such as intimidation of a third country, etc.” Serzh Sargsyan said.
