Armenian parliament to discuss upper limit of budget deficit against
GDP on June 2

YEREVAN, May 31. /ARKA/. At its special sitting on June 2, the Armenian
Parliament will discuss the issue of raising the upper limit of the
budget deficit up to 7.5% in the GDP as well as the Russian credit to
Armenia.

RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan reported that at its sitting on May
29 the RA Government made a decision convening a special meeting of the
Armenian Parliament.

The Government also decided to raise the upper limit of budget deficit
from the current 5% up to 7.5%.

The changes are provided for by amendments to the RA Law `On budget
system’, which are to be submitted to Parliament.

`We are completing active negotiations, and serious funds will soon be
attracted, including funds to the budget,’ said RA Minister of Finance
Tigran Davtyan. He pointed out that this year is a crisis one and
stressed the necessity for attracting funds.

He pointed out that the deficit budgeted for this year, 1% of GDP, is
likely to be revised during this year.

`This year the state budget deficit will show qualitative difference
from last year’s deficit. During this year we are going to attract
about 300bln AMD,’ said RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.

He added that the funds include both the Russian credit and the
unprecedented package of the World Bank (WB), as well as credits from
the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

On May 20, RF and RA Ministers of Finance, Alexey Kudrin and Tigran
Davtyan, signed an agreement on a US $500mln credit to the Armenian
economy. The soft credit will be allocated for 15 years at an annual
interest rate of 4%.

In 2009, the revenues of the Armenian state budget are to total
905.4bln AMD, on-budget expenditures 945.4bln AMD, and budgeted deficit
40bln AMD.

The budgeted AMD/USD exchange rate is 302.4 AMD/US $1.`0–