Quite recently at some occasion the Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan stated that the business environment of our country is improving. As evidence to his statement he reminded of e-register website, which enables to register a company within 15 minutes.
It turns out that the businessmen of our country are not very excited either of the mentioned innovation or the other reforms of our government. The evidence of that is the report on competition released by the World Economic Forum for 2011-2012. The indices here are built based on the assessment of the businessmen. It turns out that by the criterion of domestic competitiveness we occupy 139th place among 142 states, in the category of anti-monopoly policy (138th place) and in the category of dominating groups in the market (133rd place). Let us once again remind that this assessment was provided by the Armenian businessmen. And this happens in the case when our government (especially after the global crisis) claims at every occasion that they are fighting against monopolies and formation of free competition and market. For example, our businessmen rated the customs procedures and clearance in the 132nd place when the government states every day that the tax, customs procedures have been drastically improved. Indeed these are the most vulnerable indices. There are certain criteria, by which we occupy leading positions. For example, in the case of the effect of malaria on businesses we occupy the first place. It means that the Armenian businessmen are the most protected from malaria. We also rate in a quite favorable place in the case of terrorism effect on Armenian businessmen. We occupy the 17th place. In a word, by taking into account all the indexes Armenian occupies the 92nd place among 142 states. This of course cannot be a satisfactory index for a country, which claims to become a financial regional center. But there is a positive point in the report as well. Compared to the previous year we progressed by 6 positions. As the authors of the report mention it is connected with the improvement of trestles of competitiveness. In particular essential progress was registered in the functioning of infrastructures, institutes, higher education and financial market as well as in the sector of technological readiness. You can check out table 1 to assess our rank in the competitiveness efficiency.
The main advantages of Armenia are related to the order of job hiring and dismissal, the simplicity of starting a business and malaria/terrorism protection. For example, the report mentions that this year due to the increase cell phone subscribers the phone companies were included in the list of 10 best operators. As of the flaws, then we have yielded our positions in the category of macroeconomic indices and stability. The most vital discrepancies are the market size, quality of business education. Despite the lofty speeches the main issue for businessmen still remains corruption, which are followed by tax administration, monopolies, bureaucracy, inflation, currency exchange policy, etc. However, the assessment of the report looks sadder if we compare with other CIS countries (See table 2).
Very often when our authorities express opinions about social-economic realities and highlight the importance of comparisons. This is really bad because for them the important thing is not the actual situation but the sport interest. The first thing is to be ahead the other neighbors. We should be competitive not only compared to others but also for something. And in this case when we are speaking about the competitiveness of the state we are first comparing with the other states of the region. Azerbaijan has been considered the most competitive. Georgia is more competitive than us too. Turkey occupies the 9th place. Even Iran with its sanctions is more competitive (62nd place).Under these circumstances it is mildly said unserious to speak about the notion to become a regional financial center.