Yesterday the National Statistics Service summed up the economic indices of the first month of the current year. In general, they don’t do serious analyses based on the first month of the year. They mostly do it for formal purposes.
In January the economic activism drastically falls connected with the holiday season, vacations and other seasonal matters. But this time another factor joined these ones, which doesn’t allow to draw comparisons within the timeframe as in the past. The tricky thing is that the NSS doesn’t publicize the GDP growth in regard of the month. Instead every month we will have a new unit, which is called economic active index or simply EAI. Unlike the GDP index (which has a monthly, quarterly and annual periodical division) the monthly EAI depicts the shift of the products and services volume and not the shift of the GDP. Besides that, the monthly EAI doesn’t include the taxes levied from the monthly incomes. Those are included in the calculation of the quarterly GDP. Instead of January, January-February, January-March months we will hence have indices displaying the reporting periods for January, February, March… December. And the GDP index will be publicized by only quarterly or annual frequency. As the NSS webpage reads the monthly calculations of the GDP of Armenia was ceased based on the advice of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Nevertheless, certain parallels can be drawn. And so the EAI in January of the current year (compared to last January) amounted to 7.7%. As in the past years this index was not being calculated it is impossible to draw lines and compare with the past indices. But as a reminder you can see in the table to what extent the GDP has grown in the past years. In the aspect of certain sectors of the economy the picture is different here and it’s possible to draw comparisons. As you can see the volume of the industrial goods continues growing and compared to the same month of the previous year amounted to 5.7%. So after the crisis the industry has started to show signs of life, the influence of which, however, the average citizens don’t see yet. Let us remember that in January of the previous year the growth of industry amounted to 6.5% and in 2008 a slump in the amount of 0.1% was registered. The sector of construction before the economic crisis was the “hero” of our economy. The table shows that despite the cold days of January and the post-holiday period the construction rates in January 2008 reached 79.7%. A year later, the growth started to slow down but it didn’t become negative for the economy because the crisis was just commencing. And during 2010 this sector which was worn out because of the crisis, registered 10.7% plummet. This year in January construction registered 0.9% growth. The index of agricultural products remains low. In January of this year compared to January of the previous year, the statisticians registered 2.5% plummet. It is an ungrateful effort to speak about this sector and make prognosis because as the experience of the past years showed the nature plays more of a big role than the ministry. So the economists should probably leave their forecast of the agricultural sector to seismologists. If in the economic indices we had the nomination “hero of the beginning of the year” then the sector of services would definitely be the winner. Compared to January of the previous year this year the services grew by 24.3%. The sector of services registered a unique record in a different aspect as well. As we mentioned in January the economic activism drastically drops and without exception in all sectors the January index is less than of December. This difference is best demonstrated in the sectors of construction, agriculture and retail trade, in which after the December “boom” a drastic slump is registered. The achievement of the sector of services of the current year is that in the line of the past 5 years the January slump was the least – 22.4%. It means that none of the sectors of economy was able to start the year with this little downshift. Let us also speak about the trade indexes, which already as usual draw some kind of grin on our faces. The thing is that it has been the second year that the trade volumes in the literal meaning of the word do not change. So if we believe in the national statistics in this year the retail trade rates are equal to the rates of the rates of the previous year. This precise resemblance can be explained by the surfeit of the lottery of receipts. However, the last line of the table worries us most – the salaries. The average salary rate during the past 12 months has grown by 4.5%, reaching 104,051 AMD. Moreover, the salaries o state institutes didn’t shift up, only 0.1%. The surplus from domestic sources amounted to AMD 16.9 billion and that from external sources to AMD 3.3 billion. Budget revenue grew 11.6% or by AMD 6 billion in January 2011, compared with the same month of the previous year, to AMD 57.1 billion. According to the ministry’s figures, 92.9% of January’s revenue was formed from taxes, state duties and mandatory social payments, and 7.1% from other inflows. Proceeds of state-owned establishments’ off-budget funds exceeded AMD 1 billion. AMD 44.5 billion were raised as taxes and state duties in January, 31.9% of the quarterly projection. The sad side of these numbers is seen when we compare those with the index of inflation. During the same period, that is the past 12 months the prices of consumption goods increased by nearly 10%. And this is said in accordance with the national statistics. But this time even without statistics it is possible to see that the employees of the country got poorer compared to the previous year. Their salaries didn’t drop but the value of salaries dropped. Last year with 100,000 AMD they could buy more than with current 104,500 AMD. So the official statistics confesses that despite the activation of the economy the hired employees got needier during the year. Perhaps this is the most significant index here.
