YEREVAN, JUNE 5, ARMENPRESS. 2018 was an unprecedented year for Armenia from political terms, however, in these conditions the country’s government managed to solve the problem of maintaining macroeconomic stability, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the joint session of the parliamentary standing committees during the debate of the 2018 state budget performance report.

“One presidential election, 5 elections of PM, snap parliamentary elections and a snap election of the Yerevan Mayor, as well as a velvet revolution have taken place in Armenia. This is important in order to describe the situation during which the process of budget performance took place. In such circumstances, our government, which was formed in May 2018, in fact managed to solve the most important issue, the talk is about the preservation of macroeconomic stability. I have already stated in the Parliament, but here also I want to state that perhaps it’s impossible to find many cases in the world history when such large-scale political changes are taking place in the country and which are not accompanied with economic shocks, collapse or semi-collapse of financial system, and everything is taking place in the conditions of macroeconomic stability”, the Armenian PM said.

He stated that 5.2% economic growth has been recorded in 2018. “But I want to note that 4.5% economic growth was forecast in the 2018 budget which has been adopted by the former government and the former Parliament. In other words, in 2018 in conditions of such global political upheavals the government managed to overfulfill the plan put on the 2018 budget by the previous government, but completely with other predictions. And in this regard I want to emphasize the following that the 2018 state budget has been fulfilled. Based on the 2018 state budget performance results the Armenian government doesn’t have any commitments which are not fulfilled”, the PM added.

Pashinyan said in 2018 they had a low inflation rate. “I also want to note because I remember that the main topic in media and social networks in August-September was inflation. And there were many negative predictions, but we managed, also by taking some extraordinary measures, to restrain the inflation and based on the results of the year we had a deflation”, Pashinyan said.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan