ANDRANIK MARGARYAN DREW UP "MAGNIFICENT" BUDGET FOR THE NEXT PRIME MINISTER

Lragir, Armenia
Nov 1 2006

On November 1 the Armenian government and the standinc committees of
the National Assembly kickstarted debates on the State Budget 2007.

If formerly names were given to the state budget that are related to
the economy, such as a budget of survival or a budget of development,
this time Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan, in presenting the budget
bill, thanked the government for "drawing up a magnificent document".

The minister of finance Vardan Khachatryan was much more modest,
"This is the bill of the state budget of 2007."

Hardly twenty members of parliament participated in the debates, which
is at least strange, since each committee includes over ten members
of parliament. The members of parliament, who showed up, represented
the coalition, and the only representative of the opposition was Aram
Gaspari Sargsyan, who left after listening to the prime minister. It
should be noted that this important bill of the state interests only
10-15 percent of the members of parliament.

Now about the magnificent budget. The government estimates a 68.3
billion drams deficit of the Magnificent, a nearly 4 percent inflation,
a 9 percent growth of the GDP, the government will battle economic
crime and improve tax and customs administration. As a result of
this improvement the executive estimates collections of 50 billion
drams. The government is hopeful that the imports will grow by 13.5
percent, exports by 16 percent, however the balance of trade will be
negative and will total 903 million drams. And since the prime minister
left without meeting the news reporters, the minister of finance Vardan
Khachatryan had to do the hard work of additional comment. One or two
news reporters hardly managed to find out from the prime minister
that independent from who the next prime minister will be, "Normal
conditions are created for the activities of the next government, the
next prime minister." The minister of finance thinks the growth of the
negative balance of trade is not dangerous because it does not exceed
5-6 percent of the GDP. "Many countries would dream of this." Our
foreign debt will grow as well, but "it will not affect essentially
the country’s capacity to pay." And judging by different standards,
Armenia will be considered a country of low or average burden of debt.