“In Armenia the industry hasn’t grown more than 5% during the past 10 years. The reason of that is monopolization because monopolies don’t need industry,” told our reporter and Armenian famous economist, academician of the Russian Academy of Science Abel Aghanbegyan. He mentioned that monopolization mainly relates to importation because the most of the money can be made due to importation. According to the renowned economist, such a level of monopolization is extremely dangerous because it hinders the industrial development. Aghanbegyan also spoke about the policy of the Central Bank of Armenia, which is so much lauded by the RA government. “The policy, which the CB was implementing in relation to the AMD before the crisis I think is extremely dangerous for the Armenian economy. As the AMD was evidently over-valued it caused the unprofitability of industrial development. Whole sectors of economies were as a result ousted from Armenia. Diamond processing was quite developed in Armenia. Armenia could have developed to become a country famous with diamond processing and jewelry production. Armenia had all the prerequisites for that. They even wanted to open a diamond stock market in Armenia. But it didn’t happen due to the AMD revaluation,” stated the academician by once again highlighting that it’s necessary to conduct a policy, which would be profitable for both the importer and exporter. “When importation exceeds exportation a negative somersault is created. And the remittances don’t cover even half of this deficit. That is the reason why at the end of final summarizing calculations Armenia is having a negative balance. Ultimately importation creates the increase of debt. The debt of Armenia already amounts to 40% of Armenia’s GDP and that is already dangerous. And if it rises a little bit it may become critical. This is another loophole of the economy,” stated Aghanbegyan. It is interesting to know whether the viewpoints of the famous economist will somehow affect one of the culprits of the current miserable situation of the Armenian economy the RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, who likes to quote the most exotic citations from foreign authors. Most probably it won’t.
