YEREVAN, August 30. / ARKA /. Armenian prime minister Tigran Sarkisian had a meeting with the members of the public sector of the National Youth Policy Council and various youth and student organizations on August 27 in the resort town of Tsaghkadzor. The prime minister took their questions relating to the country’s economy, government policy, social programs concerning the young families, etc. In response to a question about inflation Mr. Sarkisian said in 2009-2010 inflation was the second reason of deepening poverty in Armenia.

He said, ‘We had an unprecedented high level of prices. The target inflation for us had always been 3%, while during the crisis we had a three times higher rate of inflation that reached up to 10%. Nowadays we are implementing a policy aimed at stimulating the economic growth, and on the other hand, moderating the inflation. We already have the inflation rate of the first seven months, which shows that we are already transferring from high inflationary phase to an average inflationary phase and this year we will only have a 5% inflation rate, which is twice lower than that of the previous year. It will create more favorable conditions for fighting against inflation in 2012. Also, this year we are expecting 4.6% economic growth and, naturally, this will create more favorable conditions for poverty reduction.’

According to the prime minister, there are different methods to measure the poverty. He said the government has developed a poverty reduction program and strategy because ‘this has been the number one challenge facing the r country for the last ten years and ‘because it is unacceptable to live in poverty in the 21st century.’ He said the country has recorded significant progress over the last 10 years, but unfortunately, in 2009-2010 ‘we had a retreat because of the serious economic decline. The incomes of our population reduced and parallel with this the social condition became worse. ‘

He said the content of the government’s anti-crisis program is as follows: ‘despite the fact that we had economic recession and rapid decline of state revenues, we not only should not have reduced state social programs, but on the contrary, we should have increased them. Despite the 14% economic downturn, we raised pensions, social allowances to the vulnerable groups to increase their resistance, so that they could easily overcome that critical situation.’ -0-