Yesterday the minister of economy of RA Nerses Yeritsyan convened a press conference to introduce the journalists to the vision of the government to make Jermuk the Swiss Werbier.
Let us mention that Werbier is a tourist area, where on February 8-11 visited Yeritsyan and the delegation headed by him (mayor of Jermuk Vardan Hovhannisyan, NA MP Ashot Arsenyan, deputy-minister of urban development Narek Sargsyan and the head of the tourist department of the foundation of national competitiveness Hasmik Antonyan). As Yeritsyan has mentioned the purpose of the visit was to get introduced to the Swiss experience of development of skiing resort areas and discuss the possibility of adopting those in Jermuk town. Even the official statement shows that our officials have reconciled the business with pleasure by visiting the Swiss Alps; visited Werbier, the ropeway and tourism office, skiing resorts Avoria-Morzin, Sioni airport, Sayoni SPA Complex, station of garbage collection and sorting, etc. In a word, during three days they have managed to see a lot and learn and even get encouraged especially from the elevator, when you go up 1000 meters and an entirely new world is opened in front of you with its infrastructures, resort centers, etc. Besides being impressed the members of the delegation have realized an important thing – Jermuk and Werbier have something important in common, the landscape and the nature. All that is necessary to be done is plan everything right. “We have the same mountains,” says Yeritsyan. All we have to do is plan right and make the mountains center for tourism. “The mountains and snow that are problems for us are sources for Switzerland to make billions,” says Yeritsyan. By the way, in order to make his words more substantiated Yeritsyan was showing on slides the images of Jermuk and Werbier. Indeed, how can there be any tourism without pictures reminding of good memories (despite the fact that the members of the delegation were not included in those photos)? The pictures haven’t showed another very important thing – the difference of behavior and attitude of the Swiss and Armenians. “The resorts of Switzerland are famous not because they have good attractions or high-class resorts but with cleanness and high-level service,” says Yeritsyan, who as a matter of fact, realized the essence of the factor during this exact visit. The visit to Switzerland had another psychological impact. This visit has inspired our officials with courage and decisiveness. “When scrutinizing the amount of investment we could get rid of fear because immense investments are not necessary,” says Yeritsyan. By the way, for the development of Jermuk the government is planning not to take turtle slow steps and conform to international standards only in 50 years but by doing everything swiftly and involving large investments. Moreover, the government is not going to allow wide-spread construction. In the words of Yeritsyan as of now the government forbids any construction in Jermuk until necessary solutions are found. “The government should make sure that free areas are left for further development,” says hence the Republican MP. So the government is not going to permit any construction in the city until the project of development of the town is not prepared for at least the coming 20 years. A Swiss Company “Tiger de Swiss” is in charge of preparing a model of development and will be paid 200 thousand USD. By the way, during this period concrete agreements were made. For example, the ropeway of Werbier is of no need to the Swiss any more. So they have decided to dismantle it. So our side will take it and bring it over to Switzerland. The minister finds the missing of such an opportunity illogical by saying that the Swiss are dismantling the ropeway not because it is old or outdated but because it is no more included in their development project. In his words, Armenia should substantially change the scale of its economy and begin thinking globally, “In this context large infrastructure projects may play as a catalyst to enhance our economy, especially that many of them are being already materialized, particular, I mean construction of roads, IT and energy, including renewable and nuclear energy, projects,’ Nerses Yeritsyan said, adding that these projects costs’ are billions of USD. Armenian government has singled out formation of regional health, tourism, financial and education centers as priorities. At the end of the press conference the journalists have tried to distract the encouragement of the minister from the visit to Switzerland and focus on domestic issues. For example, how will the increase of commodity costs affect on our economy? In Yeritsyan’s words it will mostly affect the chemical production but in this sector there is a motive of increase the potential. Yeritsyan portrayed the latest macroeconomic data as a clear indication that the economic crisis in the country is over. “And I want to assure you that we have come of out that crisis well,” he told journalists. ‘The Central Bank of Armenia is doing some relating work, but to recover this idea we need more time and only then move ahead,’ the minister told a Monday news conference. According to Yeritsyan, Armenia may transform into a regional financial center, but it must first enforce sweeping reforms in pension, insurance and corporate management sectors. ‘If we manage to attract several economic sectors to the capital market this and next year, we would have a ground to return to this idea,’ he said. In Yeritsyan words, the recovery is facilitated by what he described as substantial capital investments that have been made in public infrastructures in the last two years. “They could not have failed to have an impact on the diversification of the economy and this growth figure,” he said. Yeritsyan also insisted that financial assistance provided by the government to the crisis-hit construction industry has not been a waste of money. “The government measures against the construction decline have been limited,” he said. “The government has never even tried to fully make up for the construction decline.” The NSS data show that a 6.5 percent rise in industrial output was the main driving force behind the unfolding recovery. That seems to have primarily resulted from rallying international prices of copper and other non-ferrous metals, Armenia’s main export item. Armenian exports jumped by 57.5 percent to almost $54 million in January. Armenia’s macroeconomic performance was also positively affected by a 3 percent growth in agriculture reported by the NSS. By contrast, the construction sector, which has born the brunt of the recession, contracted by about 11 percent during the same period. “The recession in the construction sector will continue but industry and other sectors will start to grow. In January the rates of economy were more than expected. We have say that in Armenia recession stopped and we are slowly starting to register progress,” says Yeritsyan. Armenia’s worst recession since the early 1990s has come to an end, a senior government official claimed on Monday, citing official statistics that show the Armenian economy growing last month for the first time in over a year. According to preliminary data released by the National Statistical Service (NSS), Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by 2.4 percent year on year in January after shrinking by 14.4 percent in 2009. When the journalists reminded of the opinion that the government had failed and asked the minister to mention at least one direction when the government succeeded Yeritsyan responded with hardly able to hide his anger, “We have a clear vision of the future. When the government started its work the global crisis hit. This crisis was similar to the one in the 90s. Can you imagine how we overcame that back then and now?” How can it be that after the dual-digit growth of the economy Tigran Sargsyan says that the reason of the gap of the economy is the structure of the Armenian economy? Doesn’t this mean that during the past several years an incorrect policy was conducted? As a response to this question Yeritsyan said that it’s not good to speak about right or wrong now. It was just they were growing at the expense of growing real estate price. This indeed cannot be considered growth of economic index.
P.S. By the way, at the moment of the press conference in front of the government the employees of the Gold market were organizing a protest action and even the closed door of the press center couldn’t hush their noise and exclamations. As a response to a question of one of the journalists as to whether the government is going to enter into a dialog with these people, Yeritsyan answered that the government has been in dialog for a long time. “The society should learn to pay taxes. We expect that we’ll find the right solution to this issue. And one of those is that the employees of the gold market should start to pay taxes in accordance to their incomes,” said Yeritsyan.