U.S. DEFENSE MINISTER DOES NOT ATTEND TO WATER PIPELINES
10-11-2006
LRAGIR.AM
"A financial document cannot be magnificent, it is another survival budget
and pursues pre-election aims," stated Member of Parliament Victor Dallakyan
November 10. He thinks the estimation that the collections in 2007 will be
up by 70 billion drams are not realistic. If they are likely to fight black
economy, why they failed before, asks the member of parliament. Meanwhile,
with regard to the proposal of the government to allocate 710 million drams
to raise the salary of high-ranking officials in 2007 the member of
parliament does not ask questions but puts forward evaluations and
proposals. According to Victor Dallakyan, "This is electioneering, pledges
of the corrupt government to the officials, who will need to be highly
active in the election. This is an effort to use the administrative and
financial levers in electioneering, and immoral. The average pension is 12
thousand drams, and the high-ranking official’s salary may mount to 350
thousand drams."
Victor Dallakyan suggests saving this 710 million, cut the 860 office cars
twice, add this 2.5 billion drams and spend this 3.2 billion on social
policies, namely raise pensions, return the lost savings, medicaid, etc.
Victor Dallakyan announced in joke that even his wife is asking her not to
act against the proposals on raising the salary or pension of members of
parliament. The member of parliament resists.
Victor Dallakyan is worried by the disbalance of our budget and the
Azerbaijani budget, the comparison of other economic indexes. "The
settlement of Nagorno Karabakh has moved from the military to the economic
sphere, if the country is in a better political and economic state, it will
eventually dominate. Patriotism will be replaced by economic factors," he
thinks and speaks in numbers. Their military budget totals 1 billion
dollars, ours is 263 million. Our state budget is 1.2 billion dollars, their
economic growth is 34 percent, ours is 12.5 percent. From 2003 to 2007 their
state budget grew 8 times, ours grew 4 times. Azerbaijan’s oil revenues may
mount to an annual 7 billion dollars.
If we had built an Iran-Armenia transit pipeline, we could get 250 million
dollars from transit. But we will not because Russia used its "energy
truncheon" and a small-width gas pipeline is built. Unlike Serge Sargsyan,
Victor Dallakyan knows cases when Russia has used investments in the economy
for political tension. "The government is vulnerable because it is not
legitimate. And it is vulnerable in the relations with Russia. These
relations are vertical," stated Victor Dallakyan.
Victor Dallakyan also noticed that it is hard to imagine the U.S. defense
minister open a water pipeline in the state of Arizona.