CRISIS IS BEHIND, BUT NOW WORK SHOULD BEGIN TO DEAL WITH FUTURE CHALLENGES, NERSES YERITSIAN SAYS

Noyan Tapan
Feb 22, 2010

TSAKHKADZOR, FEBRUARY 22, NOYAN TAPAN. "It is impossible to foresee a
crisis, even if you feel that there is such danger. It is important to
be able to manage the crisis and to derive benefits from it. Armenia
has acted in this way: it made the financial and economic crisis
controllable," Armenian Minister of Economy Nerses Yeritsian stated at
the Kamurj international economic forum held in the city of Tsakhkadzor
on February 20.

In his words, the crisis demonstrated to the world that no country
can remain unaffected by global developments. "In fact, for Armenia
the crisis was a forced one. However, thanks to the perception of
our people, the support of business circles and the active policy of
the government, Armenia managed to make the crisis controllable,"
the minister said, adding that 2.4% growth in January 2010 shows
that the crisis is behind, and now work should start to overcome
future challenges.

The minister said that today all countries are trying aggressively
to become international players, they are making serious investments
in new directions of development, and Armenia should become more
enterprising in order to use these opportunities. So, according to N.

Yeritsian, it is necessary to have a more global thinking and not to
limit the country to its resources because in the post-crisis world,
capital will become more mobile. In this sense the governent can play
a catalytic role in those large infrastructure projects, which have
already been announced, with concrete steps being taken on some of them
today. In particular, a great investment project on road construction,
communication and energy sectors is under preparation.

Concrete decisions on the foundation of an all-Armenian bank have been
taken: some investments were made, and a management team is currently
being created. These are big projects to change the scale of the
Armenian economy. "We will speak about investments worth billions,
and they are already obvious today," the minister stated.

He considered export as another key direction of economic development.

He also underlined the importance of improving the business climate.

"We should be able to make developed markets accessible to Armenia,
particularly a great opportunity has formed to enter the European
market, <…> where there are millions of consumers with good taste
and money, and this will help us to diversify our industry," N.

Yeritsian declared. He added that these programs will be implemented
within 5-7 years, but intense work on them is already underway
at present.

According to him, it is necessary to create infrastructures,
through which "we will finance our growth and development, and our
economy’s dependence on the world will become more proactive and
manageable instead of being sensitive". In his opinion, reforms
should be implemented in 3 directions: management of the state and
private sectors, shift to a new pension system, and introduction of
insurance companies.

N. Yeritsian said that a serious dialog on the indicated problems
will begin this year, and the Sustainable Development Program will be
revised in late 2010. "We will develop a new program through dialog
and independent research, and in case of solution of its problems,
Armenia will become a state with a serious role in the region. That
is, instead of using other standards and becoming involved in
various regional developments, we will create standards ourselves,"
N. Yeritsian declared.