The national statistics will never stop surprising us. However, before speaking about the next surprise let us ask a question. During the previous year have you ever met a teenage kid on the streets of Yerevan, who approached you to ask for alms?
We think the response is positive especially for those people, who have several times walked in the center of Yerevan or visited a cafe. And especially these people will be surprised when they read the report on the RA social conditions in 2009, which was released by the National Statistics Service two days ago. One of the sections of this report is called “Beggar and homeless teenagers.” And the summarized information posted in that section is trying to convince us that the number of the teenage beggars and homeless is zero. It means that in Yerevan there are no begging kids. There are no such kids in Aragatsots, Ararat, Armavir and in some other marzes. In general, according to that report, as of the end of 2009 the police has registered only 26 homeless children, 18 of which are in Shirak marz. It is not excluded that the experts may blame us that the police fixes only the names of officially registered kids. We do agree with that. But in that case we’d like to know why they are releasing some kind of information, which as a matter of fact doesn’t have anything in common with reality. That may only have one justification. When various international organizations are giving certain assessment or evaluation to Armenia they basically rely on official statistics. And we are represented as a very favorable country on paper to the international community. However, there are often situations, which cause serious bloopers to even the national statistics and indirectly reflect the cruel reality. For example, while statesmen of different calibers were generous in uttering words of appreciation to the anti-corruption policy of Armenia, speaking about the industry growth and the increase of employment rates the Civic Aviation Division publicized data, which wouldn’t fit at all in the general thrill. According to the publicized statistics during the 8 months of this year the number of the passengers with no return from Zvartnots and Shirak airports amounted to 61 thousand. 574 thousand left and only 513 thousand returned. This information was publicized but remained slightly unnoticed. But in a normal country this information would cause a general complaint address to the government. The society would recall the government. How does it happen that in a country, which has only 3 million population, overcomes the crisis with such an honor, speaks about fundamental programs 60 thousand people annually migrate?
It is hard to say whether this information was made public on purpose or no. This is not all what has been done. In the official web site of the civic aviation one can find the statistics of the nine months. According to it the number of passengers flying from the Zvartnots and Shirak airports during January-September was 660.550, and the number of passengers arriving in these airports was 590.660. It means that during the first nine months 70.000 people left Armenia. In the same period of the previous year the number of passengers who left Armenia and did not return was 52.000.
One of the media companies wrote that the officials in charge of statistics had reported to the authorities of Armenia that a new wave of migration broke up in 2008, which was named as the “third wave of migration”. The different of this circle of migration is the fact that the migrants are from wealthy families. This is close to the reality because everybody has relatives who were from wealthy families but left their country.
From this prospective the words of ANC representative Vahagn Khachatryan are true. Concerning the reduction of bank deposits in Armenia the former mayor said, “People take out their savings from banks for two purposes. They either use those resources to leave from the country or take care of their routine needs.”
Far in August 2009 the experts of the Gallup international examined the migration tendencies in CIS countries and reported that 39% of the population of the country wants to leave. For comparison it is worth mentioning that in Georgia this rate is 14% and in Azerbaijan it is 12%. The UNI writes in its report entitled “Human development national report – 2009” that the number of people migrated from Armenia since independence till now is about 800 thousand – 1 million.