41% OF ARMENIA’S ECONOMY IN SHADOW: ARTSVIK MINASYAN

NEWS.am
16:17 / 12/14/2009

No proposal of ARF Dashnaktsutyun was accepted by RA Government since
it joined the opposition, even the ones presented when ARFD was in
ruling coalition and were underway, are currently turned down. This
proves the fact that RA authorities are guided not by political or
economic expediency, but political conjecture, ARFD member Artsvik
Minasyan informed NEWS.am.

He expressed bewilderment with the fact that RA Government even
rejected the proposal by ARFD to increase budgetary allocations to
NKR security zone settlement. Minasyan also criticized severely the
authorities’ economic policy stating that Armenia’s economy will
hereafter depend on international market due to their illiterate
actions. As for the pre-crisis achievements of Armenian economy and
GDP two-digit growth, it is nothing else but a bubble, if it does not
impact the social level of the population, Minasyan underlined. "Such
a growth is worthless if people keep on living in bad conditions," he
outlined. According to him, Armenia’s banking sector is in deplorable
state too.

Referring to the RA authorities’ intention to abolish oligopoly,
Minasyan noted all the steps in this direction taken by Government can
expose over 4% of the economy, whereas according to ARFD calculations
(that matches with the official data) the level of shadow economy
is up to 41% in Armenia or even 60% under certain estimates. "41%
of hidden economy totals AMD 243bn, of which 4% is a scanty part and
will not affect the economy dramatically," Minasyan concluded.