On October 28, 2011, Hrant Bagratyan, the coordinator of the economic committee of the Armenian National Congress and former prime minister of Armenia, officially stated that the Armenian National Congress thought realistic to return our citizens’ deposits in “Haykhnaybank” (Armenian savings bank) and said that the Congress would seriously deal with that issue in the short-run.
The former prime minister of Armenia talked about the possibilities of returning the “lost” deposits made in “Haykhnaybank” in Soviet times on other occasions too, that clause is included in his “100 steps” economic project that is an official document of ANC.
At the end of 2011 ANC regional organizations were assigned to collect detailed information about the depositors, deposits they had made etc. A rather active collecting is in progress in the regional offices of the Congress.
Aravot.am did not manage to find out the current results of that process from the central offices of ANC. Mr. Bagratyan who made the offer did not have certain numbers either – he does not control the process personally and as far as he knows, there is no such analysis.
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Let us observe that the process of returning deposits in “Haykhnaybank” has been in progress all these years. This offer was one of the winning cards of another political force, the Rule of Law Party – that offer emerged along with the establishment of the party. Whereas, since then and until now, many people have claimed that RLP used that offer for propaganda, although the offer of RLP has been realized with some provisions for a few years already.
We inquired from Hrant Bagratyan why that issue was assessed as a pre-election trick in case of RLP and in case of ANC it was a realistic step. Mr. Bagratyan detailed that there was no issue of pre-election propaganda there, “It was made long ago.” As for RLP, the former prime minister advises not to confuse and explains, “RLP has done what the Cabinet of the Republic of Armenia decided as early as in 1993. And the Cabinet decided at the time that those deposits should be defined as a debt and returned sometime after. RLP has made us closer, stimulated the solution of that issue, 50 times reducing the debt. I.e. one should have got $2000 compensation, they give $40 as for today.”
Depending on the size of the deposit, those numbers are different, there is no certain statistics and in our interlocutor’s definition “no smart paper” has come to his hand to make a certain analysis, but the picture is almost like that. Our interlocutor concludes from all this, “6-7 years ago, RLP, the ruling coalition, in order not to face the fact that the former establishment had promised to define those deposits as a debt and return them, instead of gratitude, grumbling at the former establishment that they had taken those away, stepped forward, saying that they were returning the money. Whereas, those deposits had nothing to do with the former establishment, Gorbachev has spent them. We think that it is not right to return only 2-3 percent of a person’s deposit. We think that the country must eventually have a government that will restore the economy and not like these people… and will be able to pay back those deposits in 5-10-15-20 years. Certainly, it is not possible to return the deposits today, but they can give stocks that will always be in effect and the son or the grandson of the given person can get that money, as Stalin did at the time, the so-called treasury bonds, and define those deposits as a state budget debt. It would be fair.”
The sum at issue is $3-4 billion altogether, which Hrant Bagratyan promises to return in a few years, in order that the people’s faith in the state is restored. “Why do we return the debt with 9-10 percent interest rate when we take it from abroad and this is without interest rate”, says Hrant Bagratyan, admitting that they had not been completely honest either and had not added the interest rate.
By the way, according to Bagratyan, it is possible to make partial payments with the stocks they intend to give, therefore he notes that they will subtract the amount of money already paid from the overall sum.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
