“After 10 years we have had 7.5 percent economic growth, and the 10 years were the years when there were two world economic crises. We had a rather moderate inflation last year, you know that 4-4.5 percent inflation was envisaged based on the budget”, Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs Gagik Minasyan announced at the sitting of the Committee.
At the sitting of the Committee, the annual report on the implementation of the state budget for 2017 was discussed, as well as the report for the first trimester was presented. Finance Minister Atom Janjughazyan spoke of the tax-GDP ratio and said: “The growth of the nominal GDP was 9.8 percent, and the increase in tax revenues as compared with 2016, taking into consideration the factor of return of Value Added Tax, it was 110 billion drams or 10.8 percent. This speaks of a 0.4 percent improvement in tax-GDP ratio”.
Janjughazyan said that in 2016, the level of budget deficit reached 5.6 percent of GDP, it was necessary to implement such a policy that would lead to a lower level of deficit. It was possible to regulate this by 2017 budget.
The Minister also mentioned that there is still much to be done in the budget projections, for example, in terms of expenditure there were fewer expenditures than it had been foreseen.
As for the data for the first trimester of this year, according to the data of March 31, the debt amounted to 6 billion 887 billion dollars.
According to the data of the first trimester of this year, the real growth was 9.6 percent, 14.3 percent of nominal GDP growth. Basically, retail trade has contributed to the growth, 1.6 percent out of 9.6 was due to this field. Consumption is growing by 6.2 percent, investments have doubled, which are mainly Amulsar’s investments. The export image has changed slightly, the volume of imported goods is much higher, the decline in exports is 5.8 percent.
Hripsime JEBEJYAN
