YEREVAN, April 22. /ARKA/ Armenian citizens’ financial literacy should be enhanced, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said last Friday during a live broadcast on his Facebook page. Pashinyan’s remarks came in response to a user’s complaint about the “predatory” credit terms.
“The solution to the problem of high lending interests is to increase the financial literacy of the population. When a person needs money, he goes to a bank for a loan, gets it without thinking about the consequences, without reading into the documents that he/she signs,” he said.
Pashinyan said that he has very interesting statistics. “Today I received information from the Central Bank regarding the credit burden of households. Some 80% of them have certain credit obligations. For 80% of these people, the fulfillment of their credit obligations is very difficult,” Pashinyan said.
According to him, the solution is to create opportunities for citizens to work and to eliminate fines and penalties.
“I am assured that there are no loans with interest rates above 24% provided by the banks, but there are other financial organizations providing loans at much higher interest rates. We have decided to help people and the credit histories of 130 thousand people have been cleared. Approximately 10-15 thousand people used the opportunity to get rid of fines and penalties,” said the prime minister.
According to him, the Armenian government can really set the upper limit of interest rates. -0
