Friday, March 10 2023 16:42

ArmInfo.Former Prime Minister of Armenia, economist Hrant Bagratyan believes that the efficiency of economic growth in 2018-2022 was several times lower than in 2003-2007 and 2013-2017.

<So, economic growth for 2018-2022, in quantitative terms, does not  exceed the growth of the previous five-year plans (2003-2007;  2008-2012; 2013-2017) (significantly lower than in first five-year  plan, significantly exceeds the second five-year plan and is almost  equal to the third five-year plan).  Qualitatively, in terms of the  structure of GDP production, growth is inferior to all three  five-year plans - in the current structure of GDP, the share of  mining and gambling has significantly increased. Now let's see what  this economic growth will cost us >, he wrote on his Facebook page.

Noting that the official GDP growth in 2018-2022 amounted to only  26.5%, Bagratyan draws attention to the "cost" of ensuring such  growth. Having considered the ratio of GDP growth for all 4 five-year  periods and the financial resources that ensured this growth, the  expert notes that, for example, GDP growth in 2018-2022 is 2298  billion drams (we subtract 5569 billion drams in 2017 from the GDP of  8497 billion drams in 2022). <To achieve these 2298 billion drams of  GDP growth in 2018-2022, an additional 3980 billion drams were spent  from the budget (the difference between the total budget expenditures  of 2013- 2017 and 2018-2022 is 5236 and 9216 billion drams,  respectively), 3702 billion drams of money transfers (the volume of  transfers in 2013-2017 amounted to 2252 billion drams, and 5.954  billion drams in 2018- 2022 ), credit resources 4.026 billion drams  (difference between the total monetary assets of commercial banks as  of December 31, 2022 and 2017, respectively) and borrowed funds of  1526 billion drams (difference between the levels of public debt of  4186 billion drams in 2022 and 2660 billion drams in 2017). Thus, it  turns out that for 2018-2022, financial resources in the amount of  13234 billion drams were spent on GDP growth of 2298 billion drams.  This means that 5.8 drams of financial resources were spent on the  growth of 1 dram of GDP>, the economist noted.

Having made similar calculations for the next 5 years (2003-2007 -  1.2 drams of financial resources were spent for the growth of 1 dram  of GDP), ( 6.4 drams of financial resources were spent for the growth  of 1 dram of GDP in 2008-2012) and (2.6 drams of financial resources  were spent to increase 1dram of GDP in 2013-2017), the ex-premier  noted that the efficiency of economic growth in 2018-2022 was several  times lower than in 2003-2007 and 2013-2017. The growth of the last  5-year period, as the expert pointed out, exceeded the figures of  2008-2012 by only 10% - one of the worst periods in the economic  history of the Republic of Armenia since its independence. -