The global crisis, which according to the written and unwritten rules invented by the bright brains of our country, had to pass near Armenia and not affect the domestic ec0onomy, is getting deeper. It is so deep that even the official statistics cannot change the real picture.
The first official report concerning the economic regression came up in January of this year when the official statistics reported 0.7% fall of the GDP. The situation was worse in January-February and the GDP reduction amounted to 3.7%. Recently the National Statistics Services (NSS) published official information, which is very frustrating, thus according to the official information during January-March of this year the GDP capacity reduced by 93.9% compared to the same period of the previous year. This means that generally the economy regressed by 6.1%. However in March the economy developed by 22.1% compared to the previous month. In other words, if the situation does not change to positive it is not excluded that the official statistics may report double digit development, but this time in the negative direction. It is worth mentioning that in the period of January-March of 2008 the official statistics reported that the economic development compared to the same period of 2007 was 8.8%. There is economic regression in all the sectors of the economy. The slowest regression is in the sector of services, thus the regression in the sector of services amounted to 0.7%. The situation is worse in all the other sectors of the economy. The production capacity (the sector of energy excluded) has fallen by 9.1%, and 9.5% if the energetic sector included. The gross capacity of agricultural products has reduced by 5.1%. However the worst situation is in the construction sector because it has been the most active field of the Armenian economy during the recent years and it had a great portion in the GDP. During January-March of last year the construction sector developed by 22.5% compared to the previous year. However this year this sector regressed by 21.9%. It is a remarkable loss for the Armenian economy. “It is a fact that one of the best developing sectors providing growth of the Armenian economy is construction, and the world crisis first of all impacted this sector in Armenia as a result of rapid reduction of foreign investments resulting in reduction of the gross domestic product,” said prime minister Tigran Sargsyan during a recent session of the government. In fact he confessed that the Armenian economy mostly depends on construction of new elite buildings.
The government is concerned of the situation in the construction sector so much that has recently made a decision to provide a guarantee of 20 billion drams to construction companies to borrow money from banks in order to finish the construction works they have started. However no one knows how they will sell the apartments after finishing the construction works and how they will cover their debts to banks. The most important thing is that the government will make the banks give over 20 billion to construction companies to revive this sector and try to change the economic situation in the future. It is worth mentioning that this decision does not support the construction companies only because it may enable them keep their workers and escape from more unemployment. This seems to be s short-term solution of the problem.
According to the official information, during the first three months of 2009 over 4,000 people lost their jobs. This means that if the number of unemployed was 74,700, in February-March of 2009 this number reached over 78,700. In addition, the foreign trade capacity has reduced by 27.7% in January-March amounting to 781.9 million dollar. The export has reduced almost twice this year (by 47.3%). The import capacity has reduced as well and amounts to 658 million.