Public Television of Armenia
Nov 19 2009

Armenian government denies wasting Russian loan

The Armenian prime minister has dismissed allegations that his
government is misusing money received from Russia as a stabilization
loan.

"These allegations are not true at all," Tigran Sargsyan said in a
televised cabinet meeting on 19 November. "We provide a guarantee, and
the amounts are provided by commercial banks. Risk management is
carried out by commercial banks. If incomplete construction facilities
are risky, commercial banks simply refuse to provide these loans," he
said.

The government has allocated part of the 500m-dollar loan to the
construction sector. The opposition has criticized this, saying that
the government should not give loans to individual businessmen or to
the construction sector, as real estate sales have dropped due to the
global economic crisis.

Sargsyan denied reports that the government had provided hundreds of
millions of dollars in loans to the construction sector. So far, the
government has provided loans to the tune of 3.5bn drams (about nine
million dollars) on strict conditions to construction projects where
50 per cent of construction work had been accomplished, he said.

The government has also provided 12bn drams (about 30m dollars) to the
mortgage fund, he said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress