Bagrat Asatryan: Armenian government not adequately reacted to crisis

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian government has long denied the impact of the crisis on country's economy, Bagrat Asatryan , ex-chairman of the Central Bank, lecturer at the Department of Economics of the Yerevan State University told a news conference on Dec. 10 in Yerevan.

"The crisis has become tangible since the middle of 2008," he said. However, the government of Armenia, according to him, in 2008 adopted a "wasteful budget" with a 9 per cent economic growth for 2009.



According to Bagrat Asatryan, since early 2009 the government, guided by emotions, adopted anti-crisis policy without any specific means and methods for its implementation, which also lacked long-term projects. The Government of Armenia should first turn to domestic sources (banks and citizens) and try to implement anti-crisis projects at the expense of domestic debt, he said. Only after that, the government should try to attract them from outside. "If in late 2008, we were a country with a light debt burden, by late 2009 we become a country with a heavy burden as the country's national debt is approaching 50 per cent of GDP," he said.