YEREVAN, MARCH 15, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia has revised its forecast for the economic growth of the country for 2022.

The Bank now forecasts 1.6% economic growth for the year, President of the CBA Martin Galstyan said at a press conference today.

“The economic growth forecasts have been lowered from the previous 5.3% up to 1.6%”, he said.

The Central Bank says the impact of current sanctions against Russia on Armenia’s economy will be reflected by significant slowdown of the economic growth rates.

The decline in forecast is mainly conditioned by certain drop in the field of industry. “We were forecasting that the industry branch must have grown by 1.6 in 2022, however, under these new developments when we see that there are some problems in mining industry, processing industry, the industry branch is set at -4.7%”, he said.

There is also a certain decline in construction field, and accordingly the Central Bank is forecasting 7% growth for this branch compared to the previous 16.8% forecast. The forecast for the growth in services has also been lowered from 5.9% to 3.2%. The only sector that will have some positive development based on the previous forecasts is agriculture.

While forecasting the growth in the GDP, the Central Bank took the fiscal policy that was supposed to be before the shock. Change in the fiscal policy is not reflected yet in this forecast of the GDP.