YEREVAN, March 14. /ARKA/. Artak Baghdasaryan, chief of Armenian finance ministry's division in charge of economic policy, said Monday that the revised version of the sustainable economic development program would be ready in the first half of this year.

“The program with particular plan of measures and indicators was approved in 2008, but the crisis has affected the economy and the program has lost its sense, since measures implied by the program are no longer necessary and goals and results deviated from the reality,” he said.

Experts at international organizations, including UNO, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, GTZ and European Commission, are involved in the revision of the program.

Explaining the necessity of this revision, Baghdasaryan said that Armenian government, deviating from the long-term strategic program, has worked out a package of extraordinary anti-crisis measures.

“In 2010, when Armenia’s economy started recovering, we saw that things became quite predictable and that time has come to embark on long-term strategic planning,” he said. “That is why the government added the revision and implementation of the sustainable economic development program to its top-priority objectives.”

Baghdasaryan said that neither policy nor strategy would be altered in the program. He said only indicators will be changed.

He added that the top-priority objectives outlined in the program proved their right to existence even amid the crisis, but after the crisis the country’s development should speed up.

Baghdasaryan said that the government’s social policy has proven to be effective.

Only thanks to the steps taken by the government, poverty rate reached 34.1% instead of 49.6%.

The government’s 2008-2012 development program implied eight-to-ten-percent GDP growth.

In October 2008, the government approved the revised version of strategic poverty elimination program renaming it the sustainable economic development program for the period of time ending in 2021.-0---