Prior to digesting 2009 already the picture of the current year has been outlined. And the main point of this picture will be the numbers and words in the form of various statutes, strategies and other eloquent words. As a matter of fact, nothing is going to be set as a priority.
First let us mention that the summarized economic picture of 2009 is not final yet. The National Statistics Service will present the final figures of the 12 months of 2009 in the coming days. Let us recall that last year for 11 months of 2009 the NSS registered a 16% GDP slump in Armenia and according to various analyses the recession rate for the whole is 15%. And this had happened in the case scenario when the government was convincing the society that the global crisis would enable us to gain certain benefits by directing the financial resources to “stable harbor” – Armenia. Indeed this didn’t happen. Instead we had one of the worst economic figures in the world. And now it’s time to improve the indices. At its first session of the year on January 14 the Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan instructed cabinet ministers to concentrate their efforts on economic growth in 2010. “Summarizing 2009 results and hearing ministers’ reports, we should put a special emphasis on the accumulated resources and outline future steps to speed up economic growth in 2010”, the premier said. “For that, we should single out hose factors hobbling economic development and remove them.” According to the first assignment he said that all the ministers to work out at least three programs each and keep implementation under their own control. “Ministers must make every effort to report considerable breakthrough in 2010 sector by sector,” Sargsyan said. During the session the government of Armenia has also approved the industrial development concept. The ministers and heads of the departments are to present directions, which contain greater potential for economic growth. The causes hindering the growth are to be revealed. According to the Prime Minster, the mentioned programs and projects are to be distinct already in January and presented to the public as well. “The goal of this concept is to create an appropriate environment that will allow transforming Armenia into an industrially developed country through annual increase of industrial share in GDP.” This is a very nice formulation. This is no less convincing than the concepts on Center for Creation of Business and Investment Environment in Armenia, Developing Gyumri to a techno city or Armenia as a center for organized tourisms and rest. Although our government does a better job writing and drafting concepts than implementing those I think this time the government will succeed in increasing the ratio of industry in the GDP. The explanation is very simple and it’s not going to take an awful lot of efforts to do so. Thus, before 2008 our country registered a dual-digit growth mainly at the expense of construction sector, where we could see an annual of 30-40% growth. Over years due to providing “special conditions” for construction the ratio of the sector gradually had grown and had become the axis of our economy. And in 2009 construction became ballast, the slump of which blew up the balloon of our dual-digit economic growth. Last year the construction sector had several times bigger recession than all the other sectors – approximately 40%. And if in one sector such a big recession is registered than its ratio in the GDP structure indeed drastically decreases. Because of the same reason the ratio of the sectors is increasing even in the conditions of the slump. It means that we may have increase of ratio even for the sector of industry. It means that the ratio of the mentioned sector may increase even in the conditions of the overall decrease of industry rates. The results of 2009 are the best example of that. Nothing additional is needed because for our government not the actual results are important but the figures. An example of that is the increase of the taxes/GDP coefficient. The government brags about this despite the fact that this is registered at the expense of GDP reduction. Perhaps some of the readers may blame us for pessimistic articles at the beginning of the new year and that we are very skeptical about the promises of the government on development and progress. Let us respond that we have good reasons for that. Another example is the parliamentary by-elections held on January 10 of the current year in electoral district #10, where nearly 7000 voters “voted” for a candidate, whose name they had never heard before. Of course, everybody knew that it’s going to be like this and the outcome of the race was no surprise to anybody. It was just a very good waking up technique after the holiday moods, which reminded us that we live in Armenia in all aspects – political, economic, etc.