The Armenian government has expressed confidence that the domestic economy will continue to grow this year, disagreeing with a pessimistic forecast made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week.
“I am hopeful and confident that the [economic] programs that are being put into practice will bear fruit from the second half of 2015,” Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian said over the weekend.
“Despite numerous forecasts that we will have a recession owing to regional tensions, Russia-West relations and sanctions imposed on Russia, I am convinced that we will register economic growth in 2015,” Abrahamian told an economic forum in Tsaghkadzor organized for university students.
In its latest World Economic Outlook released on April 14, the IMF said that Armenia’s Gross Domestic Product will likely shrink by 1 percent this year due to spillover effects of Russia’s economic troubles. It had earlier forecast a 2015 growth rate of 3.5 percent.
Economy Minister Karen Chshmaritian also took issue with the IMF projection in a weekend interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). Chshmaritian said that Armenian growth figures predicted by the fund over the past decade have usually been wide of the mark. In particular, he argued that economic growth in Armenia came in at 3.4 percent in 2014, or well above 2.6 percent anticipated by the IMF.
“There are many such examples,” Chshmaritian went on. “But I wouldn’t like to comment on their being right or wrong. I would instead call on our investors to take a closer look at the real sector [of the economy] and see where they can make more profits.”
The minister stressed in that context that the Armenian economy has not contracted so far this year. He further said that the government sees “no grounds yet” to revise downwards its 2015 growth target of 4.1 percent widely seen as unrealistic.
Citing preliminary government estimates, Abrahamian said the economy expanded by at least 2.5 percent in the first quarter of the year. The premier did not come up with full-year growth forecasts or elaborate on government measures which he said will stimulate economic activity in the country.
Armenia’s worsened economic outlook is the direct consequence of the unfolding recession in Russia, its leading trading partner and main source of large-scale remittances from Armenian migrant workers.