Yesterday the PM Tigran Sargsyan was occupied with his favorite thing; he was giving a lecture. This time the students of the economy department of Yerevan state University had the opportunity to listen to the PM.
Tigran Sargsyan gave diplomas to the bachelor’s and master’s graduates. The topic of the lecture was “The global economy and economic developments of the Republic of Armenia’s economy”. “I am giving this lecture at the main university of the country with great pleasure. This contact with the students gives me the opportunity to understand how students perceive the economic developments in the world,” said the prime-minister.
In his speech Tigran Sargsyan touched upon almost all sectors and also brought some statistics. According to the PM, the composition of Armenia’s economy is the following now: services – 54%, agriculture – 17%, construction – 15% (before the crisis it used to be 28%), production – 15%. One thirds of the production capacity or 5% of the GDP is provided by the mining sector, which, according to the PM, is developing dynamically.
After bringing some statistics the PM analyzed the past developments and existing problems. Even though 1.5 years have passed since the world crisis, Tigran Sargsyan again discussed its results. He said that as a result of the crisis the CIS countries had even more slump than in other economies of the world because the CIS countries’ economies, including the Armenian one, do not have an adequate level of diversification and any slump of one or two sectors impacts the entire economy significantly.
“The Armenian economy had the same sickness. The economic growth in the period of 7 years before the crisis was mostly conditioned by the construction sector, and the construction sector was mostly kept on the investments brought from outside, thus at that time the capacity of the construction sector in the GDP reached 28%. It is a very high rate. It was done based on the private investments coming from abroad. Of course in conditions of world economic crisis the foreign investments were significantly reduced, and it had an impact on the construction sector first of all. In 2009we had 43% slump in the sector of construction, which had an influence on the GDP as well,” said the PM.
Tigran Sargsyan spoke about the sector of agriculture as well and said that it was the most problematic sector. He assured that agriculture was in the center of the government’s attention and was a priority.
“Currently we have 340 thousand economies in the sector of agriculture, and we have only 420 thousand hectare of cultivated lands. Of course we must have a new strategy and program for this sector, which has been approved by the government,” said the PM.
The prime-minister said that tourism is one of the priorities of the government as well and the government had targeted the goal to increase the number of tourists visiting Armenia to three million every year. However, the students did not ask whether there was any sector that was not a priority. If all sectors are priority for the government, why do they use the word “priority”?
The PM also informed good news, according to which the government had approved 17 investment projects promising to invest 80 billion drams and open two thousand new vacancies. Concerning the foreign debt the PM said that it was equal to the 43% of the GDP and assured that the government would make sure it did not exceed the limit of 50%.
Concerning the crisis Tigran Sargsyan said that in July-August there would be inflation: “Now we are in the stabile phase, and the budget and monetary policies are targeted at resisting inflation, and the results of this year show that we have been success. From the beginning of this year up to now the level of inflation is 3.5%; we have entered a deflation phase. This means that there will be inflation in July and August as well.”
The president of the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen of Armenia Arsen Ghazaryan was present there and gave the following compliment to the prime-minister: “Your students are your walking advertisements”. This means that they are perfect specialists. If so, they must perfectly know the real situation of the economy, statistics and problems of the country. In other words, the lecture of the PM would not be so much interesting for them. However, people in Armenia do not interrupt guests, especially when they speak with pleasure.