Recently there were serious discussions on credit issues in the National Assembly of Karabakh. Most of credits that were provided in 1998-2000 and recent years were not returned. According to Karabakh regional development minister Armo Tsaturyan this is a result of the fact that these credits were given without any guarantee. It is worth to mention that before they provided credits only on the base of the community head’s and citizens’ reference letters. According to the minister now they make efforts to return these credits with the help of court proceedings. As it is mentioned in www.karabakh-online.com web page now there are a lot of cases under the court’s consideration in connection with these credits. In most cases when providing these credits the authorized bodies considered some land properties that were much cheaper than the credit worth as credit guarantee. Now those people agree to give their land properties to the government as credit reimbursement guarantee, but the government and court don’t agree with this because the real price for those land properties is much cheaper than the credit sums.
In spite of these kinds of serious problems the government of Karabakh still continues to provide credits. Even more, they are going to enlarge this program and provide more than 800 million dram next year. Now “Artsakhbank” asks for credit guarantees for giving credits (this can be apartments in Stepanakert or expensive jewelry), besides cases when these credits are intended for vine growing (in this case the government guarantees this credit for three years, after which the vine field is set as guarantee). Actually it turns out that those villagers that don’t have any guarantee property or other privileges can’t take these kinds of credits and borrowings. Due to the fact that they can’t take these borrowings they have to give their property for use to other people for money. “I feel pity when I can’t take care of my own land myself. Actually it turns out that my own property is used by other families that are rich and have money”, -said a farmer during our conversation with him (he thought that these borrowings were intended for rich people). During the discussions in the NA head of financial and budget commission Arayik Harutyunyan said that he thought this program was baseless and undermined, because later it would be very difficult for them to return those borrowings. He also said that taking into account the existing vine growing development mark they would be faced with some problems like they did with grain. Answering to this question agriculture minister Vahram Baghdasaryan said that they would think of that and would try to take steps to solve that problem. NA member A. Harutyunyan said that he thought it was very important to make serious and correct calculations and relevant program developments before giving the credits.
