YEREVAN, December 30, /ARKA/. Armenian finance minister Tigran Davtian compared Tuesday Armenian economy with an aircraft that entered a turbulence zone that forced its crew to switch off the autopilot system and shift to manual control to get out of that zone.

`Our plane was quite small, it lacked fuel and had one of its engines, construction, out of order but we have managed to pass through turbulence and reach the destination by the end of the year without big losses,' he told a year-end news conference.
He said all loans, expect for the $500 million Russian stabilization loan, were provided at preferential terms.

He said Armenia will have received additional $1 billion this and next years to finance its budget, including $60 million from World Bank, $80 million from the Asian Development Bank, $305 million from the IMF and $500 million from Russia. He said part of these funds will be used next year to cover the 193 billion dram deficit budget.

The 2010 budget, approved by the parliament on December 10, calls for 742 billion drams of revenues and 935.5 billion drams of expenditures. The projected deficit is 193.4 billion drams. ($1 – 377.32 Drams). -0-