When the incumbent and former authorities were speaking of economic growth during many years, experts (including our newspaper as well), reminded people that GDP growth would not necessarily mean economic development yet. We wrote that GDP could grow with double-digits, but in parallel with that the economy could go down. We wrote that if economic growth did not result in increase of the well-being of people of that country, it means that this is not real development and there are no reasons to be happy about it. We were writing about this, but the governmental sources were continuing to praise the growth and even publishing reports one after another. Now, the incumbent government, being represented by the RPA, is changing the attitude and acknowledging that economic growth that does not support the wealth of people does not mean anything. Even the pre-election platform of the RPA has been changed and the section on changes in the economy writs the following: “We are planning to transform from targeting economic growth to targeting economic development. In addition to economic growth we need more of economic development. Economic growth will not solve our problems if it is not based on new sectors of economy, new types of activity, enterprises, production of new products and new services. All competent people should be involved in this process.” The same idea was spoken by Serzh Sargsyan during the summit as well. “We need to transform from targeting economic growth to targeting economic development. Maybe we need economic development even more than economic growth only. Economic growth will not solve our problems if it is not based on new sectors of economy, new types of activity, enterprises, production of new products and new services. All competent people should be involved in this process. As the time passes, the opportunities for extensive development are being cut down,” said Sargsyan. Would the RPA change its approach and believe in the difference between economic growth and development if the crisis did not affect the economy? Anyway, this will be a positive change if it is implemented and is not limited with mere words. It took a lot of time from the RPA to admit something that is written in books of economy. To say briefly, economic growth means growth of capacities of economic wealth production. Economic development is a wider understanding and evolves quality changes, reformation of economy structure in accordance with development of technological and sociological development. As the president said, now we need economic development, however it is very difficult and almost impossible to measure economic development. In case of the growth we can calculate the data of growth, but in case of development it is about quality changes, the estimations of which may be quite subjective. There are experts who say that economic development can be measured based on the GDP per capita as it describes the efficient distribution of resources and increase of average level of well-being of people. In fact, according to this logic emigration supports economic development. Thus, failing to prevent emigration the government supported the economic development. This section in the RPA’s platform contains political message in addition to the economic part as well. This is a political message that is first of all targeted at Robert Kocharyan and his team. In routine language it would sound like “it doesn’t matter if the economy has grown during your tenure; it did not help people live better”. In addition to this, the RPA supporters may say that during their office drivers have started using the seat security belts, are driving slower due to security cameras and, what is the most important thing, businesses can be registered online within 15 minutes. This is not economic growth but development. Generally the above said for the economic growth and effect of the past years is true. It is also true that due to this growth only a group of people have benefited. The funny thing is that most of the people from that team are in the incumbent government and they used to praise the mentioned growth during Kocharyan’s office too. Definitely this is one of the reasons why people do not believe in the RPA’s slogan “Let’s believe to change” because they have no reasons to believe. Maybe this message did not catch the attention of voters or did not reach to them because the society is more focused on elections and intrigues connected with them. However, the role of this message should not be underestimated. Recently a news agency asked RPA’s Artak Zakaryan to comment on the fact that their party’s platform is poor and does not write concrete numbers and calculations. In answer to this Artak Zakaryan said, “The RPA’s pre-election platform is not a math book to include calculations there”. In fact he is true; this platform is a collection of words that is targeted at everyone but not voters.
