The school students of the 4th or 5th grades apply a special trick when doing their math homework. It’s called “number fight”.
The thing is that starting from the 4th grade the answers of exercises, tasks and puzzles are written in the last pages of the textbooks. When the student is having a hard time to resolve the problems he uses those last pages to find the final answer. After that he does the “number fight” and corresponds the numbers with the final answer. Thus, he receives the answer not the solution. But it may work out especially if the teacher is tired when checking thee assignment.
It turns out that this style is characteristic not only to students. Our government doesn’t ever miss the chance to praise our economic growth – 13%. The opposition as a rule does the opposite. It criticizes. Moreover, the criticism takes place in two “fronts”. First they are saying that the 13% economic growth is a bluff and that the numbers are exaggerated. Secondly they say that even the 13% growth is not enough for a growing country. As an example they mention the post-war Germany. Besides that over 1 billion USD is transferred to Armenia annually. Taking into account those factors our economists insist that the growth must be at least 30%. Remember this number. It has been numerously mentioned in the media.
It seems that the government doesn’t pay attention to this. 13.4% is just enough for them. The government cares more about the opinion of foreigners. And the internationals when estimating something rate it in USD or Euros (like we used to). By opening the website of the National Statistics Service (NSS) the internationals read yesterday’s (14.02.2007) press release. It reads that the 2006 GDP amounted to 2665.0 billion AMD or 4.9 billion USD. Thus this is how they construe this information: GDP of Armenia has grown by 1.5 billion USD – from 4.9 to 6.4 USD. In order to figure out the growth percentage they apply a simple mathematical method. We divide 1.5 billion into 4.9 billion and multiply by 100. If you don’t have a calculator nearby don’t worry. It’s easy to guess especially since we have already mentioned that index above. Yes, 30%. More concretely 30.6%. This means that in dollars our economy has grown by 30%. This gives reasons to be proud of. The IMF or WB experts don’t quite trust this index. But many others, such as Armenians living in the Diaspora, may believe it. As a counter information it can be mentioned that in USD the prices in Armenia have raised by 100%. Shortly said, when they make us believe that AMD revaluation is a result of economic growth, they party say the truth. It turns out that AMD revaluation brings to economic growth. Thus, when you see 355 AMD rate per USD in the morning and 350 per USD in the evening, don’t rush to swear. Vice versa be proud because it really does increase the economic growth of our country.