According to the state budget 2011, 4,6% economic growth is anticipated for Armenia for the current year. Nobody has ever argued about this number; nobody ever discussed whether it is a realistic forecast or not or whether it is too ambitious or not. Moreover, the forecasts of international structures also match with this number. The figure of the previous year 2,6% instead of the predicted 1,2% allows the government to give a forecast like that. As of being cautious then it is quite normal taken into account the climatic conditions that affect the agriculture sector. Nonetheless, we already stepped into the second half of the year and based on the macroeconomic indices we can already assess whether we can reach that number or not. But the ones, who like macroeconomic indices this year encountered quite a hurdle. The National Statistics Service has changed its methodology and instead of the GDP it started to calculate the index of economic activeness (IEA). As a matter of fact, it doesn’t differ much from GDP and based on that we can already form an opinion. The only difference is that economic index is being publicized each month. It means that IEA is possible to compare only with January of the previous year and the February index of the previous year can be compared with March and so on. It means that the ones, who wished to have a more objective picture couldn’t do so by comparing with the trimester of the previous year. So we had to compare the monthly indices and analyze those based on “incomplete” indices. Let us remember that in January the IEA exceeded 6%. This means that in January of the current year our economy was 6% more active than last January. Indeed, many people got too encouraged by that and start to view the economy with “pink glasses.” Then February came and IEA slumped to 0,9%. Then encouragement slightly faded. In March we had a sadder index – 0,3%. The ones, who were thrilled in the beginning of the year suddenly remembered that IEA is only submitted per month and it is wrong to rely on the monthly index and make a forecast for the rest of the year. In April suddenly a great index was released – 7,7%. And this time again they forgot about the fact that this is merely a monthly index and they again started to laud the economy. In fact if we more closely follow the NSS indices we will realize that there is neither the need to be encouraged by 7,7% index nor by 0% index. The thing is that besides the monthly IEA calculation, NSS also presents the so-called chain indexes. Due to this, it is possible to draw comparisons based on simple math not only in the line of separate months but also in a separate period. We have already done this small calculation and we can see those results in the presented table.
January 106.2
January -February 103.4
January -March 102.2
January -April 103.7
As you see, in February IEA was 0,9% but in January-February it was 3,4%. The period index shows a fuller picture of the numbers. So there is no need to make a tragedy out of 0,9% index. Same way, we shouldn’t be very sad about January-March index because 0,3% is no reason for sadness and because January-February index (or if you wish economic growth) is actually 2,2%. In April, IEA as we already mentioned is 107,7. But it was only showing to what extent April of this year was higher from April of the previous year. In order to have a clear understanding of the situation it is necessary to review the full index, which is 3,7%. It means at this point we can say that the economic index is 3,7%. If we wish to say that this growth is no high we can compare with the expected 4,6% of the economic growth. If we wish to show that the situation is not so bad we can compare with 2,6% of the previous year. So it’s up to us. In the end, let us add that we have done this mini-calculation for people, who live (and urge others to live) with other indexes. A significant part of women, however, neither aware of these numbers nor wishes to be.