On November 7 the president of the Armenian Jewelers’ International Union, director of the board of “DCA” diamond producing company, Gagik Abrahamyan complained about the AMD revaluation. According to him the revaluation of Armenia’s currency only makes Armenia proud. Abrahamyan mentioned that the rapid revaluation of AMD negatively affects the activity of local producers and exporters as well as those people, who receive financial support from abroad.
The President of DCA said that a group of businessmen and him have recently met with Central Bank President Tigran Sargsyan to express their concerns, as well as the negative impact of AMD revaluation on their business. According to Abrahamyan the businessmen have offered Sargsyan to temporarily fix the AMD rate to USD and Euro He also mentioned that Sargsyan accepted the mentioned recommendation and promised to think about it. Is it true that the CB, which has always been against fixing the AMD rate, now agrees to think about doing it after the conversation with the Armenian exporters?
During an interview, the CB president announced that he has discussed the version of the fixed currency rate with the businessmen. “However this discussion made it clear that if the economic growth and income from abroad continue the same way, then the fixed rate doesn’t solve any problems for the exporters; on the contrary, it makes things even more complicated. It’s evident that by doing this the prices will rapidly go up,” said Sargsyan and added that as a result the businessmen won’t have any profits. “In the end the businessmen rejected this because they realized that the fixed rate won’t solve their problems. They should start thinking about raising the quality of their products to have more active exportation,” thinks Sargsyan.
“Does this mean that you didn’t instill hope in the exporters about the fixed rate?” Sargsyan answered this question the following way, “No. And we came to a consensus that the fixed rate won’t improve the situation.”
The pro-rector of the Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University, former minister of finances, Edward Sandoyan thinks that in terms of the currency policy, “the CB currently does what it should be doing. Some other policy – left or right, will harm Armenia a lot. However, we should have had a developed financial market a long time ago; we should have had financial mediation institutes, which would absorb the extra AMD inflow.” This means that the CB is not going to change its principles and the exporters will stay hopeless.