While our authorities day and night are mentioning that Armenia will soon become financial center with competitive economy, while promising that after several years we will be able to compare with the economy of East European countries, Armenian economy seems to go in an opposite direction, against the will and the promises of its own authorities or against their honest intentions. Despite the fact that promises given in the competitive way still are coming from the good will, it is however becoming obvious only from the official statistics which show that the volume of importation in Armenia increases several times more than the indices of exportation and industry is almost dead. Such non-professional judgments are legitimated when they are assessed by the professional organizations in this sphere. The speech concerns, mainly, the World Economic Forum and Global competitiveness reports published by them annually. “The competitive vision of the competitive economy” of Armenia (as a new generation of our authorities likes to say) seems to be doubtful and loses its charm when we are looking through the 2008-2009 report of the mentioned organization. In the list of 134 evaluated countries Armenia is on the 97 position. From the one to seven point scale (seven is the highest point, and the one is the lowest) Armenia has got 3.7 point and honorary situated between Senegal and Dominican Republic. Although the occupied position is not as bad as a motive, in the previous report we were on the 93rd position with 3.8 points, and in 2006-2007 report we were on the 80th position with 3.9 points. Actually, talking about the competitiveness simultaneously we are losing it. According to different criteria there are some evaluations which arouse horror. For example, in the sphere of innovations (Innovative technologies) we occupy 106th position, in the sphere of trade market effectiveness – 110th position, and in technological sphere – 112th position. According to the development of the phase’s classification the mark given to our economy is not satisfactory. And according to the development phase WEF classified the economies by three main phases – economy based on the factors, effectiveness and innovative economy. According to our government soon we’ll reach the last one, innovative economy, and while according to the report authors we are in the transitional phase, between the first and second phases. We have enough bad indices also at the directions of the mental property protection – 108 position, independence of the judicial system – 123 position, transparence of the state programs – 103 position and others. As of the educational system which is the most important precondition for having competitive economy, we are on 98th position, and by the quality of the management schools – 124th position. And finally, by the indices of the inner competition list we occupy the first position from the end. So we are on the 132 position by the local competition indices. We occupy the same position in terms of anti-competitive policy. This means that the State Economic Competition Committee headed by Ashot Shahnazaryan gets a D minus. But in fact this is the grade not of Shahnazaryan but our government. The report also mentions the main obstacles, which impede the business development in Armenia. The first place occupies the level of corruption (17.5%), tax administration (15.7%) and instable currency rate (10.3%), bureaucracy, etc.
