SERGE SARGSYAN’S AND TIGRAN SARGSYAN’S SPEECHES AT THE PARTIES’ MEETING
Lragir.am
19:02:24 – 20/03/2009
The press office of the president reports that the Armenian president
Serge Sargsyan convoked his second meeting with the Armenian political
parties, the topic of which was the financial economic crisis. The
topic of the first meeting was the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Opening
the meeting, Serge Sargsyan said that Armenia and its economy are not
isolated from the whole world and, consequently, they feel the impact
of the global economic crisis too. The Armenian political parties
have been expressing their stances, approaches in this connection
and, now, they have a very good opportunity to exchange their views
and discuss them, said the president. In this sate of the crisis, a
lot of highly- developed countries had to take up such measures which
would have seemed unacceptable before. And the Armenian government was
constrained to make substandard solutions too of which the public is
always aware with the help of the Prime Ministr or the president. As
the Armenian president stated, besides the government, everyone else
should deal with the crisis too, and neither the Armenian government
and the residents of Armenia are to blame for it, but at the same
time, he thinks that the government and the authorities have no
right to hide behind the crisis and put all the blame for their own
mistakes on it. As he stated, the Armenian government is holding active
discussions with a wide range of experts and cooperates actively with
financial structures all over the world. Serge Sargsyan believes that
especially the Armenian political parties have great potentials of
struggle against the crisis that is why he attaches great importance
to their meeting. He said that the global crisis is a big challenge
to the political field, evaluation system and morality. The president
asked the political parties whether they are ready to work without
the political dividend, whether they can find answers to the question
unknown before, saying that today they will try to do that together.
Addressing the meeting after Serge Sargsyan, the Armenian prime
minister said that there is no country which does not feel the impact
of the global economic crisis and each of them has its own ways of
overcoming it. The program of the government of overcoming the crisis
submitted to the National assemble on November 14, 2008 is very simple
and has three branches. The three branches are: accomplishment of
infrastructural projects, assistance to those enterprises which have
difficulties, and encouragement of small and midsize businesses. Within
the framework of the infrastructural projects, the government is
going to construct 800-1000 km of roads and highways from 2009-2012
with 110 billion of financing, building constructions in the disaster
zone with 75 billion dram, renovation of the drinking and irrigation
water systems- 100 billion dram, construction of a new nuclear power
plant and railway which needs very big investments. He added, that
different enterprises will get the governmental assistance, the aim of
which is to create new work spots, foster the replacement of imported
product by home product, increase the exporting, broaden the use of
local materials, and encourage the exploitation of innovation programs.
The prime minister said the small and midsize businesses’ financial
assistance will be increased with the help of the World Bank, European
Development Bank and the Asian Bank. The taxes for the small and
midsize businesses will be diminished.
The Prime minister noted that the Armenian government made a transition
to strict saving regime. At the same the pensions, social payments
have been increased.
The Armenian government has worked out a series of mechanisms which
will repress the price rising. All the measures, the Armenian
government will take up have been discussed with enterprisers,
businessmen. He noted that they are ready to get new proposals and
constructive criticism.
After the Prime Minister’s speech the discussion went on and lasted
5 hours.