There isn’t any economic revolution in Armenia, no fact or initiative at all that would fall within the logic of that particular concept, a former prime minister, Hrant Bagratyan, said on Monday, considering the recorded 25,1% economic growth (indicated repeatedly by Nikol Pashinyan’s government) ‟just an ordinary statistics″.
‟Those are very ordinary statistical records as we had [growth indicators] seven times higher than that,″ the economist said in an intervoew with Tert.am, citing the 1995 budgetary revenues which he said revealed a 320% increase.
Asked to comment on the decreasing foreign debt, the former prime minister attributed the trend to a ‟global crisis″ in the world economy “amid a widening gap between short- and long-term securities”. ‟The United States offers free money to the world today ; the Swiss Central Bank offers money with an interest rate … while the Dollar activity on the financial market has reached unprecedented scales – 85% globally – hence those boasting statements by the Armenian government that they have decreased the foreign debt, sounds really absurd to me. I sounds unprofessional as the world history has never seen so much free money before,″ he said.
As for Pashinyan’s recent remark that the surplus from the major taxpayers’ entries was 14% in the January-June, Bagratyan was somewhat inappreciative of the figure. ‟The taxes should have increased by 15% this year, according to the approved State Budget; yet, the growth among the major [taxpayers] was 14%,″ he said, describing the premier’s statement as a kind of PR action.
Neither did Bagratyan agree that the new government has taken any real step to combat the monopolies. In his words, analysis reveal even a slight increase in such businesses’ number.