There are too many contradictions in Armenia, especially in the field of economy. Sometimes it is impossible to understand anything only based on logical analysis. It doesn’t matter who is speaking about the economic development; whether the representatives of international organizations or not. The World Bank has used the word “Tiger” in its reports covering Armenia. On the one hand it managed to use the mentioned term, but on the other hand it reported about the low level of reforms made by the customs bodies and the fight against corruption. The head of the customs department has seen this contradiction and is surprised at the WB. Mr. Avetisyan does not agree with that point and brings the example of a survey included in that report to prove the contradiction. According to the survey, only 3% of businessmen surveyed think that there is a lot of corruption in customs. The head of the customs department talked about this during a press conference and said, “121 customs officials were fired during the past nine months”. We wonder why they fired so many people if there isn’t much corruption in that department. Did they do that because of the low level of professionalism? This seems logical. It looks more like criticism than logical solution. Please note that the officers that were fired had been hired by Mr. Avetisyan, who has been working as head of the customs bodies since 2001. This year he managed to do everything that he was not able to do during the past five years. Now let’s discuss the figures spoken by head of the customs body during the press conference. The amount of import has increased during these nine months (by 90 billion dram). According to the same information, the amount of import has grown by 1%. This growth is due to the fact that the customs rates of products were revised. Now what happened is that it has already been nine months that the foreign currency exchange rates are in a downfall. In this framework, the head of the customs body said that the tendency of the national currency growth was not positive for him as a customs officer. “It has a direct influence on the in-flow. The prices of imported goods are fixed in USD and Euro and thus the calculations are made in foreign currency too”. Nevertheless, the customs officers have found out that the investors have cheated on them for many years, i.e. they fixed lower prices of the goods imported. Now the customs department has increased the customs prices of import and thus increased the in-flow. I wonder why they fired so many people if they were doing their job well. In regard to this, Mr. Avetisyan said, “There have been cases of corruption too and some of those officers were fired because of corruption”. Nevertheless, he didn’t speak about the loss that the state had due to that. He said that as a citizen of Armenia he was happy about the growth of the national currency. They have never compared that fact with the information that they have given. They had to at least do that since they are dealing with the economy of the nation.
Export is down by 25 billion dram compared to last year. The prices for Armenian domestic products are growing because of the currency exchange rate changes. Accordingly, domestic production is becoming less competitive in foreign markets. The economic leaders of our country are ignoring this and accusing producers of their own failures. In spite of that, many of them still haven’t understood that the domestic producers have found a solution in order to avoid the national currency growth. Some businessmen have already founded businesses in other countries, for instance, in Georgia. Some businesses are even involved in reproduction of agricultural products and the owners say that they are working out business plans to export their products to Georgia. Armenian state officials aren’t paying attention to this and are looking for ways to blame the economy. By making illogical statements, they are lowering the level of domestic economy. According to the official statistic information, the amount of new businesses is falling down since 1997. Instead of discussing that issue in the framework of monopoly and corruption problems, they are discussing other small problems and they say that more people have started using gas to drive their cars. Furthermore, Mr. Avetisyan even brought up facts, “I have received a letter from the “ArmRusGazard” company that the suppliers have used 48% more gas this year than last year”. He is very busy and does not watch news programs at all; otherwise, he would have seen broadcasts about new gas suppliers.