As it’s known, for our government the improvement of the indices for Armenia of the international organizations is more important than the reality.
Armenia has even elaborated an official program aimed at raising our rating in the “Doing Business” and other publications. And yesterday’s indices released by Forbes magazine really caught in surprise the Armenian officials, who do their best for high rankings by international magazines and reports. Earlier this week the Forbes magazine offered a list of the world’s ten worst economies ranking the South Caucasus country next to the supposedly poorest performer Madagascar. The magazine based its conclusions on the analysis of the macro-economic indicators of 177 countries and regions over the past three years. According to Forbes ranking, the list of five worst economies is topped by Madagascar, followed by Armenia, Guinea, Ukraine and Jamaica. According to Forbes, despite a 15 percent economic slowdown in 2009 due to the global financial crisis, Armenia is still trying to keep up with the rest of the world. It is natural that the members of the ruling coalition wouldn’t agree with this evaluation. For example, member of the Prosperous Armenia Party, economist Vardan Bostanjyan doesn’t agree with this estimation according to the information of A1+. “Mildly said, these data have nothing to do with the actuality. In the line of certain macroeconomic indices maybe we may be lagging behind but in terms of the general economic environment we cannot be in the last places,” Bostanjyan told A1+. He thinks that Armenia should occupy 70th place or should be somewhere close to that. His RPA colleague Gagik Minasyan refused to give any comments by mentioning that he is not aware of this evaluation. He also added that he wouldn’t be able to be introduced to the data of Forbes within one day. Businessman Mikhail Baghdasarov yesterday told the journalists, “Forbes is a respected and well-known magazine. Of course, I don’t know where they take these data from but… Everything depends on which angle you look at things.” By the way, when responding to the question as to whether he agrees with the opinion of the second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan, who thinks that Armenia had a better economy and living standards were higher, Baghdasarov said, “Robert Kocharyan is an experienced economist and politician. During his tenure capital construction rates reached its peak. As of the current situation I cannot say anything because I don’t know what we are doing and where we are going. But I can say that the whole world appeared in a bad situation because of the global crisis.” One of the former statesmen, who didn’t wish to introduce himself, said that he cannot comment on anything because of the heat. And when he found out that we were asking about Forbes he said that Forbes magazine is merely gossip source for him because no one can know the actual amount of the people’s wealth. And then, when we told him that the Forbes didn’t measure their wealth but placed Armenia in the “honorable” second place of the top 10 worst economies of the world, he said that he fully agrees with that estimation. In fact, it is very difficult not to agree with this list because it is not anyone’s subjective opinion but it’s estimation based on concrete calculations. With a 15% contraction in GDP in 2009 and mediocre growth forecast for the next few years, this landlocked former Soviet republic is struggling to keep up with the rest of the world. Per-capita GDP of $3,000 is less than a third of neighboring Turkey, and with inflation running at 7%, Armenia’s citizens are getting poorer. GDP per capita: $2,959 Inflation: 7%. Let us quote from the Forbes Magazine the part, which relates to Armenia and Madagascar. “All 177 countries were ranked according to the average statistics for their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and inflation for the past 3 years. GDP is s often considered an indicator of a country’s standard of living while inflation refers to the rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. Among them, it was Madagascar who went on top with a $448 per-capita gross domestic product which was three times between 1970 and 2009, as revealed by United Nation (UN). Economic mismanagement was one of the reasons why the country got on top of the list. Second to Madagascar is Armenia, the former Soviet Union Republic which has an inflation rate currently running at 7%, with a per-capita GDP of $3,000.” It is really difficult not to consent with any of these allegations. It is a statistical fact that Armenia’s economy suffered a 15% slump. Even the government stated that our economy will not surpass the 5% growth in the upcoming 3 years. And the negative balance of the foreign trade despite the rates of exportation continues growing and becomes a compatible number for the Armenian state budget. Let us also note that this index doesn’t present the statistical picture of the economy of our country. It instead evaluates the quality of growth. In particular, when they are mentioning the construction boom based on foreign remittances, it means that they once again called the economy of our country “bubble.” Of course the formulations this time were milder. The Forbes reporter cannot surprise any Armenian. In the social networks yesterday a joke was being circulated, according to which, “the situation is so bad that we cannot even say that we are the first from the end of the list.” The surprising thing was the lack of attention of many of our statesmen to this report. Yet they are very careful when it comes to the reports, which provide growth rates for Armenia. It is hard to say what the counterattack of the government propaganda will be in this regard. Anyways, we won’t be surprised that starting from yesterday some governmental analysts will start to claim that Forbes is a yellow media.