HOW I SPENT THE WINTER VACATIONS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE STATE BUDGET
Babken Tunyan

February 25, 2010

Yesterday the minister of economy of RA Nerses Yeritsyan convened a
press conference to introduce the journalists to the vision of the
government to make Jermuk the Swiss Werbier.

Let us mention that Werbier is a tourist area, where on February 8-11
visited Yeritsyan and the delegation headed by him (mayor of Jermuk
Vardan Hovhannisyan, NA MP Ashot Arsenyan, deputy-minister of urban
development Narek Sargsyan and the head of the tourist department
of the foundation of national competitiveness Hasmik Antonyan). As
Yeritsyan has mentioned the purpose of the visit was to get introduced
to the Swiss experience of development of skiing resort areas and
discuss the possibility of adopting those in Jermuk town. Even the
official statement shows that our officials have reconciled the
business with pleasure by visiting the Swiss Alps; visited Werbier,
the ropeway and tourism office, skiing resorts Avoria-Morzin, Sioni
airport, Sayoni SPA Complex, station of garbage collection and sorting,
etc. In a word, during three days they have managed to see a lot and
learn and even get encouraged especially from the elevator, when you
go up 1000 meters and an entirely new world is opened in front of you
with its infrastructures, resort centers, etc. Besides being impressed
the members of the delegation have realized an important thing –
Jermuk and Werbier have something important in common, the landscape
and the nature. All that is necessary to be done is plan everything
right. "We have the same mountains," says Yeritsyan. All we have to do
is plan right and make the mountains center for tourism. "The mountains
and snow that are problems for us are sources for Switzerland to make
billions," says Yeritsyan. By the way, in order to make his words more
substantiated Yeritsyan was showing on slides the images of Jermuk
and Werbier. Indeed, how can there be any tourism without pictures
reminding of good memories (despite the fact that the members of the
delegation were not included in those photos)? The pictures haven’t
showed another very important thing – the difference of behavior and
attitude of the Swiss and Armenians. "The resorts of Switzerland are
famous not because they have good attractions or high-class resorts
but with cleanness and high-level service," says Yeritsyan, who as a
matter of fact, realized the essence of the factor during this exact
visit. The visit to Switzerland had another psychological impact. This
visit has inspired our officials with courage and decisiveness. "When
scrutinizing the amount of investment we could get rid of fear because
immense investments are not necessary," says Yeritsyan. By the way, for
the development of Jermuk the government is planning not to take turtle
slow steps and conform to international standards only in 50 years but
by doing everything swiftly and involving large investments. Moreover,
the government is not going to allow wide-spread construction. In the
words of Yeritsyan as of now the government forbids any construction
in Jermuk until necessary solutions are found. "The government should
make sure that free areas are left for further development," says
hence the Republican MP. So the government is not going to permit
any construction in the city until the project of development of the
town is not prepared for at least the coming 20 years. A Swiss Company
"Tiger de Swiss" is in charge of preparing a model of development and
will be paid 200 thousand USD. By the way, during this period concrete
agreements were made. For example, the ropeway of Werbier is of no
need to the Swiss any more. So they have decided to dismantle it. So
our side will take it and bring it over to Switzerland. The minister
finds the missing of such an opportunity illogical by saying that the
Swiss are dismantling the ropeway not because it is old or outdated
but because it is no more included in their development project. In his
words, Armenia should substantially change the scale of its economy and
begin thinking globally, "In this context large infrastructure projects
may play as a catalyst to enhance our economy, especially that many of
them are being already materialized, particular, I mean construction
of roads, IT and energy, including renewable and nuclear energy,
projects,’ Nerses Yeritsyan said, adding that these projects costs’
are billions of USD. Armenian government has singled out formation
of regional health, tourism, financial and education centers as
priorities. At the end of the press conference the journalists have
tried to distract the encouragement of the minister from the visit
to Switzerland and focus on domestic issues.

For example, how will the increase of commodity costs affect on our
economy? In Yeritsyan’s words it will mostly affect the chemical
production but in this sector there is a motive of increase the
potential. Yeritsyan portrayed the latest macroeconomic data as a
clear indication that the economic crisis in the country is over. "And
I want to assure you that we have come of out that crisis well," he
told journalists. ‘The Central Bank of Armenia is doing some relating
work, but to recover this idea we need more time and only then move
ahead,’ the minister told a Monday news conference. According to
Yeritsyan, Armenia may transform into a regional financial center,
but it must first enforce sweeping reforms in pension, insurance
and corporate management sectors. ‘If we manage to attract several
economic sectors to the capital market this and next year, we would
have a ground to return to this idea,’ he said. In Yeritsyan words,
the recovery is facilitated by what he described as substantial
capital investments that have been made in public infrastructures in
the last two years. "They could not have failed to have an impact on
the diversification of the economy and this growth figure," he said.

Yeritsyan also insisted that financial assistance provided by the
government to the crisis-hit construction industry has not been a waste
of money. "The government measures against the construction decline
have been limited," he said. "The government has never even tried to
fully make up for the construction decline." The NSS data show that a
6.5 percent rise in industrial output was the main driving force behind
the unfolding recovery. That seems to have primarily resulted from
rallying international prices of copper and other non-ferrous metals,
Armenia’s main export item. Armenian exports jumped by 57.5 percent
to almost $54 million in January. Armenia’s macroeconomic performance
was also positively affected by a 3 percent growth in agriculture
reported by the NSS. By contrast, the construction sector, which
has born the brunt of the recession, contracted by about 11 percent
during the same period. "The recession in the construction sector
will continue but industry and other sectors will start to grow. In
January the rates of economy were more than expected. We have say that
in Armenia recession stopped and we are slowly starting to register
progress," says Yeritsyan. Armenia’s worst recession since the early
1990s has come to an end, a senior government official claimed on
Monday, citing official statistics that show the Armenian economy
growing last month for the first time in over a year. According to
preliminary data released by the National Statistical Service (NSS),
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by 2.4 percent year on year in
January after shrinking by 14.4 percent in 2009. When the journalists
reminded of the opinion that the government had failed and asked
the minister to mention at least one direction when the government
succeeded Yeritsyan responded with hardly able to hide his anger,
"We have a clear vision of the future. When the government started its
work the global crisis hit. This crisis was similar to the one in the
90s. Can you imagine how we overcame that back then and now?" How can
it be that after the dual-digit growth of the economy Tigran Sargsyan
says that the reason of the gap of the economy is the structure of
the Armenian economy? Doesn’t this mean that during the past several
years an incorrect policy was conducted?

As a response to this question Yeritsyan said that it’s not good to
speak about right or wrong now. It was just they were growing at the
expense of growing real estate price. This indeed cannot be considered
growth of economic index.

P.S. By the way, at the moment of the press conference in front of the
government the employees of the Gold market were organizing a protest
action and even the closed door of the press center couldn’t hush
their noise and exclamations. As a response to a question of one of
the journalists as to whether the government is going to enter into
a dialog with these people, Yeritsyan answered that the government
has been in dialog for a long time. "The society should learn to pay
taxes. We expect that we’ll find the right solution to this issue. And
one of those is that the employees of the gold market should start
to pay taxes in accordance to their incomes," said Yeritsyan.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress