Prior to the end of the New Year celebrations the Armenian parties have been actively involved in the pre-election campaigns. The press conferences and discussions on various themes have become more frequent. The government is especially active when it comes to economy. The economic picture of the previous year is not fully clear yet. The macroeconomic results will be publicized in a few days. However, it doesn’t hinder them from advertise the achievements of the previous year without extra modesty. They name those unprecedented. Moreover, all the pro-government officials claim that 2012 is going to bring better data. They say that there have been numerous reforms in 2011 and the results will be visible in 2012. This gives us ground to think that the current government came to power only in 2011 and had managed to do so many reforms. Physically it was impossible to do that in 2008, 2009 0r 2010. Of course they have an answer to that too – the global economic crisis. This is the same crisis, which our government preferred not to speak about. Currently the Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan adverts to this fact whenever he’s questioned about the inaction of the government in the previous years. Whatever negative traits exist or existed in the government, whatever mistake is made in the past is linked to the economic crisis of the world. For example, our government doesn’t get disturbed at all about the 35% existing poverty in the country. During his last press conference of 2011 the minister of economy Tigran Davtyan mentioned that he’s not interested in the poverty index because the opening of new workplaces in the next year would reduce the reduction rates. As of the high rates of poverty, then according to the minister, “the global economic crisis unfortunately, hasn’t bypassed by Armenia in 2008-2009.” The most noteworthy thing is that in parallel with unemployment, poverty, migration Davtyan stated that 2011 was an unprecedentedly good year. “There would hardly be someone, who’d deny that it was so because the numbers and data speak of how good the year was,” he said. Davtyan, however, makes his statements more cautiously than many of his colleagues and party members. As you noticed he speaks not about the economy but the economic indices. And it’s no secret that in Armenia we can have bright indexes and gloomy reality. However, unlike the minister, the chair of the NA standing committee on financial and budgetary matters Gagik Minasyan makes interpretations in parallel with presenting the indexes. For example, when speaking of the 30% growth of export and 10% growth of import Minasyan says, “This speaks of the fact that our exported goods are becoming much more competitive in the international market and the internal market as well.” However, the indexes excerpted from the official webpage of the State Revenue Committee of Armenia display that the growth of the export is mostly connected with the inflation. The customs value of many of the natural products has grown. We have written in detail about this in one of the November releases of 168-Zham. However the following statement of Gagik Minasyan is very interesting, “During the 11 months we have implemented approximately 90% of the budget and this is a quite good index. The incomes of the state budget exceed the incomes of the previous year by nearly 10%. This is also a positive thing. The indices of our tax policies have raised but the profit tax has had the highest growth. This speaks of a very important thing. Our state and companies have started to receive more profits. This also speaks of the fact that we are now outside the phase of overcoming the budget and are currently in the phase of development.” First of all let us mention that the index of profit tax growth cannot be considered as growth of profit. And it not right to say that due to this the companies have started to receive more profits. Let me bring a concrete example. One of my acquaintances had a small business. In 2010 he had a turnout of 24 million AMD but he closed the year with damage because he had made investments. Next year he just had to close down his business. However, before closing it, in summer of 2011, he paid 240 thousand AMD as profit tax because according to our legislation you have to pay in advance one percent of the turnout of the previous year regardless of whether your business worked with damage or profit. It means that my friend lost his business but if we look at the profit tax it seems that he had had essential profits. Gagik Minasyan and many other statesmen like his draw conclusions about the reality from their offices based on the results of the official statistics. By the way, abovementioned fact is an exact example of what’s happening in reality. In short, according to the official statistics, everything is great and is going to be greater. And according to the reality, we have a terrible picture. If it turns out that both the reality and the official data are correct we will have a situation in the country, which would resemble the homeless man on the picture, who has no clothes to wear but is walking with a notebook. The most noteworthy thing is that besides the government representatives the oppositionists of the past also speak about the economy in bright colors. For example, one of them the chair of the Armenian Goods Producers Union Vazgen Safaryan recently told the journalists that in the next year the key branch of economy of Armenia will become industry. By the way, if we really rely on the official statistics, industry grew by approximately 14% in 2011. It’s no problem that the majority of the people haven’t noticed this growth. The most important thing is the index again. And the government is able to excellently manipulate numbers. The best example is the index. One of the government representatives has recently literally said the following, “We will be able to keep the inflation in the frames of four percent just like we succeeded to restrict the inflation this year.” This is an evidently contemptuous attitude to the society. So what can we do that during the year the people have been buying goods at very expensive prices during the year? The most important thing is the final index. To be frank, we have always thought that the inflation is going to be in this shape and we have written about this man times in the past. We think that the government will be silent this time hoping that their slyness has been accepted this time. But we haven’t taken into account the fact that we have elections ahead and we should get ready for the wave of fresh cynicism and unexpected behaviors.
