GOLD ISSUE

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on July 04, 2008
Armenia

Vice President of the Central Bank Vache Gabrielyan made clarifications
regarding the circulated misinformation about selling Armenia’s
gold resources.

He underscored that the decision on not keeping gold in the stores
of Armenia’s Central Bank has been made still in 1994 and that is
why in the years to come all the gold has been withdrawn from Armenia.

Based on the logic of market, in 2003, a decision was made to change
the prices expressed in gold into pound.

"If we look for the assessment of press and authorized structures
of those times, you will see that none of them has previewed
similar growth of gold prices. At that time the income expressed
by gold fluctuated between 0,1-0,25% and pound – 3,5%. This deal
was very profitable. It brought 2 billion 300 million dram’s
profit." V. Gabrielyan underscored.

He said that the government is accused of not performing this deal in
2008, because in that case the profit would have been more. The Vice
President of the Central Bank offers to make judgments regarding
the gold trade based on the information of the certain period of
time, to understand whether or not it was rational. "It was really
rational. Had you known that the price of the house you sold in
1997 was going to raise 10 times, would you sell your house by that
price." V. Gabrielyan asked.