ARMENIA’S FUTURE LIES IN ADOPTION OF NEW ECONOMIC POLICY, ARA NRANIAN SAYS

Noyan Tapan
March 17, 2010

YEREVAN, MARCH 17, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. "Armenia’s
future lies in adoption of a new economic policy," member of "ARF"
parliamentary faction Ara Nranian expressed an opinion at the
National Assembly on March 16. He said: "The Republic of Armenia
needs fresh approaches and solutions and new people capable of making
these changes". According to him, the ARF together with Socialist
International will organize a conference in Yerevan on March 25-26 with
the participation of experts and politicians from several countries.

The member of the same faction Ruzanna Arakelian said there is already
inflation and an incontrollable situation in connection with the rise
in the gas tariffs starting from April. In her words, mechanisms
to curb inflation are either absent or they are not controlled. As
for elimination of the inflation consequences, she considered it
necessary that a law on indexation of incomes be adopted in Armenia,
which was done in some countries. Another member of "ARF" faction
Artsvik Minasian announced that in connection with the gas tariff
rise and its substantiation, their faction has created a working
group and will regularly discuss this issue.

In the words of Heritage faction’s member Armen Martirosian,
everybody knows that in Armenia the economic policy is a derivate
of the governance policy, and the authorities use both legislative
and executive levers and create unfair and unequal conditions, due
to which "big business is growing, while small and medium business
is almost eliminated".

The independent deputy, non-party man Victor Dallakian underlined the
necessity of not only making the rich pay the full amount of taxes,
but also imposing additional taxes on them – for luxury. He informed
those present that he put a bill on luxury tax in circulation at the
National Assembly. The bill proposes that persons with property of 0
thousand and over should pay additional taxes, and luxury taxes should
be used to increase the birth rate, pay pensions, family allowances,
unemployment, disability and other benefits, and to pay medical
services of the socially vulnerable groups.