Armenia is the poorest country in the region according to the poverty index, we are poorer even than the Central Asian countries, and our poverty index is higher than in the CIS countries. Economist Suren Parsyan said this in an interview with Tert.am.
It is worth noting that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan recently published a post in which he directly stated that people live 50% better.
“Some people react nervously to my statements that people live about 50% better. On July 27, there were more than 50 thousand people on the shores of Lake Sevan alone, the vast majority of whom were from Yerevan and 9 regions. Coming to the shores of Lake Sevan with your family is an expense, and a significant one at that. Where do these expenses come from and why hasn’t this been done on such a scale before?” Pashinyan said.
In response to Pashinyan’s statements, the economist noted that one cannot judge the economic situation or standard of living based on the indicators of one or two days.
“Usually, during these months or days, many Armenians vacation in Sevan, and also foreigners who come to Armenia for a few days come there to relax and organize their vacation. This is a common phenomenon for this stage of tourism in Armenia. In the case of Sevan, hotels and beaches operate mainly for two months a year. We are talking about July and August, the rest of the time they are mostly idle and need to earn money to cover the costs for the whole year,” he said.
According to the economist, when talking about welfare indicators, several important indicators should be taken into account, for example, the poverty index.
He said that according to the latest official statistics for 2023, the poverty rate in Armenia is 23.7%, and the extreme poverty rate is about 1.2%. Over the past seven years, the poverty rate has decreased by only 4-5%, and the number of poor people in Armenia has not decreased by 50%.
“If you look at, for example, the growth of wages, then yes, in recent years we have seen an increase in nominal wages. The growth of wages was also accompanied by some inflation, but this year, for example, we had double-digit inflation in food products. Poor or low-income people spend most of their income on buying vegetables and fruits, the prices of which have increased in double digits.
In other words, we cannot assess the standard of living of the entire country based on just one or two days of tourist activity,” Parsyan said.
The economist noted that Armenia is the poorest country in the region in terms of poverty. “We are poor even compared to the countries of Central Asia. Currently, we may even slightly surpass Ukraine in terms of poverty, and our poverty rate is also higher than in other CIS countries. Therefore, I think it is pointless to talk about rapid development and changes in the standard of living,” Parsyan said.
In addition, he noted that the number of loans has increased sharply in recent years. “That is, people’s loans are growing faster than their income, which means that people’s standard of living may be improving on the surface, but in reality this is happening mainly due to an increase in the volume of loans, which at some point will lead to a deterioration in their standard of living or the emergence of social problems,” he emphasized.