YEREVAN, October 19. / ARKA /. The economic structure of Armenia should be changed for the country to come out from crisis, World Bank General Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.
“Despite the fact that the Armenian government is properly responding to the crisis, it became apparent that because of the impact of the crisis, the Armenia’s economy needs structural changes to ensure that the crisis will take over in the future,” she said at a press conference on Sunday.
As Okonjo-Iweala noted, the crisis revealed the weaknesses of the Armenian economy, such as its dependence on foreign transfers, which in the pre-crisis period was 18% of GDP.
During January-August 2009, Armenia’s banking system received 672.3 million USD by physical entities, which is 35% or 363 million USD less for the same period in 2008.
At the same time, the WB representative noted that despite the unprecedented high rate of decline in the Armenian economy, the Government had properly responded to the situation and launched a proper anti-crisis program.
Okonjo-Iweala noticed that the crisis found Armenia in conditions of low levels of public debt, which enabled the government to obtain additional budgetary support.
In recent years Armenia has actively courted foreign funds for anti-crisis measures.
For example, on June 12 Russia provided the republic stabilization credit of 500 million USD, the IMF intends to provide 822.7 million USD as facilitation, and the World Bank will transfer 545 million dollars in 2009-2012.
“Other governments do not have such opportunities,” she said.
In addition, according to Okonjo-Iweala, the Armenian government has set the proper tasks of maintaining social spending. –0-
