Quite recently interesting news has appeared in the media about Thailand. The minister of finances of this country has participated in the filming of a soap opera as an actor in order to help the economy of the country. By the way, in the soap opera he plays the role of a person stranded in debts.
Such actions have become a common phenomenon in various countries since 2009. The international crisis made the governments of countries to take unprecedented steps especially in the aspect of savings. For example, the minister of finances of one of the Asian countries forbad his subordinates to use the state vehicles and ordered them to go to work by bicycles. And he served as an example for them. In European countries they have also applied certain steps, which seem ridiculous at the first sight. For example, in one of the countries, a state decree was issued, according to which it was instructed to use both sides of the paper when writing a letter in order to save paper. Perhaps, it’s ridiculous but quite justified. In Armenia no one has ever done anything like that. And our statesmen didn’t feel the tenseness of the crisis on their own skins. Perhaps that is the reason why some of them were saying that there was no “turbulence” or that “we were able to overcome the crisis with honor.” OK, let’s say saving and being frugal is far from Armenian mentality. But at least we can restrain ourselves when squandering. According to the recent data of the official statistics we are still in crisis. Compared to the same period of the last year the GDP grew only by 2.8% and certain sectors, such as agriculture and construction have rated lower results than during the actual crisis year. In short, it wouldn’t be too bad to save a little. But this is no problem for our statesmen to spend astral amount of money on official visits, the use of which is mildly said very doubtful. Several days ago the Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan paid a two-day working visit to the Russian Federation – Yekaterinburg, where the 12th session of the Armenian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Cooperation kicked off. It was clear that the Prime Minister would go but it was quite unclear why the delegation of the Prime Minister included 20 people. Probably they don’t even know what they’d concretely do in Yekaterinburg. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister met with representatives of the Armenian community of Yekaterinburg and presented the program of the Armenian government and got acquainted with the issues exciting them. Afterwards Sargsyan visited the Federal University, where he met with the local professor-lecturer staff and students, and afterward traveled to “Uralelectromed” factory to get acquainted with its works. When speaking of the economic programs of Armenia Sargsyan mentioned that due to the global economic crisis of 2009 there had been slump in this sector in Armenia. The Prime Minister presented the economic situation of Armenia, as well as the steps and the anti-crisis program assumed by Armenia in the direction of overcoming the financial and economic crisis. Prime Minister Sargsyan noted that despite the crisis, the government has managed to fulfill all the social commitments. Recovery of economy has been registered and the economic growth index is 2.8 as of the first 9 months of this year. “We have implemented anti-crisis projects to withstand the crisis. As a result of these activities we had to diversify the economy, helped the representatives of small and medium businesses. Of course, instead the deficit of the Armenian budget grew but the Armenian economy has started to slowly recover. This year there is a slump only in the agriculture sector. And we are working on that to recover that,” said Sargsyan. Hardly the students of Ural University would be interested in Armenia well enough to know the actual reality here otherwise the Prime Minister’s words “transition to diversification of economy” is extremely exaggerated. And this diversification occurred spontaneously as a result of the slump of the volumes of construction. There were questions about helping the small and medium businesses. Let us mention that on the next day Sargsyan made a speech at the session of the Armenian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Cooperation and spoke to this issue. He said the creation of a telemedicine system in Armenia was one of the most promising projects in this field. The two countries are also working on a number of documents concerning cooperation in other fields as well. These include draft agreements on the creation of an Armenian trade and exhibition centre in Moscow, on cooperation between the two states in the humanitarian field, on youth policy issues, in the prevention emergencies and organization of search-and-rescue operations. Special attention is given to the development of inter-regional cooperation. When discussing the state of and prospects for bilateral trade and economic relations, the sides noted that cooperation was developing dynamically: in the first eight months of the year, trade turnover between Russia and Armenia increased by 16.1 percent to almost 500 million U.S. dollars. “These means were directed to restoring the earthquake zone and credits were given to small and medium businesses. And this step has maximally helped them in overcoming the crisis,” said Sargsyan. Thus, the Armenian small and medium businesses received credits form the Russian loan and tempered the effect of the crisis. This is already news for us. Indeed, we can argue a little bit about the availability of these credits and their use. But there is no need for our counter-arguments because one of the members of the cabinet of the Prime Minister, minister of economy Nerses Yeritsyan has spoken about “helping” the one of the expensive businesses. According to the news.am the minister confessed that the contribution of crediting is not regulated. He said, “In the beginning the credit is a good thing. 6 months later it turns out that the payment percentage of the credit is higher than the incomes. And the person ends up having hostile relations with the credit giver.” Indeed, in Yekaterinburg they have also spoken about the ropeway of Tatev. “In Armenia we have a big potential of tourism development. Several days ago in a peculiar location, in Tatev, the longest ropeway of the world was opened, which will find its place in the world map of tourism. Projects are implemented in Jermuk, Arzni, Sevan in order to develop tourism. The infrastructures are being restored,” said the Prime Minister by expressing hope that many of the students, who were present at the meeting will visit Armenian tourist centers, will be introduced to the history of Armenia. But in the official news agencies it not mentioned whether the Armenian Premier has spoken in Yekaterinburg about our astral project – the Armenian cheese. It would be great to mention that because while the Prime Minister was expressing his opinion around various global issues the rise of the cheese price has become one of the most popular topics of discussion. The average citizens were wondering what happened that within one day the cheese price rose from 1700 AMD per kilo to 2400 AMD. The economic competition committee rushed to respond that there is not anti-competition agreement behind the rise of the price. There are over 70 cheese producers on the field. And it’s not realistic that they’d come to a conspiracy agreement. According to the members of the committee the rise of price is connected with the price of milk powder. The price of milk is connected with the season and the increase of the price of fodder. After this the committee considered its work done. They stepped away by saying that they have got nothing to do in the market. They have got nothing to do with the milk price because the shepherds and the dairymaids that are over a hundred are more than milk producers. So everything is in perfect competition and everything is connected with market factors. The surprising thing is that the market factors have started to work actively when the government has started to brag about launching the Armenian cheese project. Despite all these explanations everybody for a moment has started to recall the Armenian sheep project. Of course, back then nobody said that the Armenian sheep is going to conquer the world (or at least the neighboring state) but the price of sheep didn’t wait for that and jumped up drastically. And now, most probably, the cheese-makers have decided not to wait for the route of the Armenian cheese and immediately increased the price. Let us mention that during the year the meat and dairy product prices have started to drastically jump up. And cheese is only one example and it’s hard to say whether by the end of the year what product will top the record of high prices. Recently Serzh Sargsyan also spoke to this issue by saying, “In our society one of the common concerns is the high price of agricultural products. Indeed, it is so and we have the same concern. In this case I wouldn’t even connect this process with the rise of prices in the world and wouldn’t even connect it with climatic factors because no matter how clear the reasons are price increase is never desirable and we should fight better against inflation.” And the best method of fighting against this phenomenon is probably the willingness of our government to stay away from such projects as Armenian cheese, Armenian sheep and other Armenian stuff. The only result of those projects as the history showed is the rise of prices.