President holds consultation with government officials responsible for socio-economic policy

Today, President Serzh Sargsyan held a consultative meeting with the country’s socio-economic policy-makers to discuss and summarize the results recorded in the socio-economic sphere in 2017.

The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of International Economic Integration and Reforms Vache Gabrielyan, Chief of Staff of President Armen Gevorgyan, Central Bank Chairman Artur Javadyan, the heads of those public agencies responsible for social and economic policy development and implementation, the Chairman of the National Statistical Service, as well as officials from the Presidential Staff.

The Prime Minister noted that the preliminary indicators provided in today’s report would be subsequently compared with the National Statistics Service’s annual indexes in order to make the necessary corrections.

Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of International Economic Integration and Reforms Vache Gabrielyan, Minister of Economic Development and Investments Suren Karayan and Minister of Finance Vardan Aramyan presented the overview of economic growth and the key results for 2017.

President Sargsyan stressed the importance of conducting periodic analyses of economic and social indicators in the process of developing, adjusting and improving the economic policy. The President urged the meeting participants to provide for inclusive economic growth, stressing that all the layers of society, and especially the vulnerable groups, should benefit from economic growth. In this regard, Serzh Sargsyan stressed the need for making consistent efforts in order to create a favorable environment conducive to those demographic indicators specified by the President of Armenia along with ensuring high rates of economic growth over the coming years.

“The current analysis was made based operational information available from government agencies and our international partners. It goes without saying that when the National Statistical Service makes public the final figures, we will make the appropriate adjustments.

The analysis or the exercise just as the Prime Minister likes to call it, has the main goal of exposing the components of economic growth, or otherwise identifying the driving forces behind economic growth, since revenue is dependent on the growth components. And of course, our future plans will be more accurate and realistic, if we take into account the revenue projections and the sustainability, continuity of these components.

I believe that within the next few weeks we will have completed the strategy of Armenia’s economic and social development by 2030. Considering that the Government has achieved good results in 2017, I do not think that the deviations will be that big, and we will boast an economic growth of 7.4-7.7 percent.

Indeed, this is a good indicator, but we also need to realize that one-year’s good economic growth cannot have a tangible impact on the broad layers of our society. This growth rate should be maintained for another two or three years if we are to build a solid groundwork for our demographic programs,” the President of Armenia said and emphasized that 2018 started with good results, however, it cannot be stated yet that Armenia has reached the peak of its potential as long as the results of that work have not affected all the layers of our society.