YEREVAN, MARCH 4, NOYAN TAPAN. The current economic situation in Armenia is mainly conditioned by the economic policy of Armenian government and the monetary policy of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) rather than by international financial and economic crisis, economist Andranik Tevanian stated at the March 4 press conference. In his words, the international processes have conditioned the economic processes in Armenia by 10-20%, while the rest is the consequence of the internal policy. A. Tevanian said that March 3rd can be called a "black Tuesday". In his words, there was total anarchy in the country yesterday as the two persons responsible for Armenian economy - the president and prime minister did not speak at all about the floating exchange rate. The economist reminded that as early as mid 2008 there were opinions about the need to pass to a controlled floating exchange rate, that is, to raise the exchange rate by 5-10 drams every week, which would not cause shocks, and reserves of 370 million dollars would not be wasted. However, the representatives of authorities considered this step as wrong. Now, according to A. Tevanian, the situation is fatal, and the reserves were spent, reaching a billion USD mark. He expressed an opinion that the steps taken by the authorities are related to criminology rather than to economics. "I will ask the prosecutor's office to open a criminal case and find out how it happened that only a day ago people sold more than 31 million dollars at 307 drams a dollar on the stock exchange, while the following day the CBA sold the dollar at 372 drams," Tevanian said. In his opinion, the concrete officials should be held accountable for that, and the prime minister, the chairman of the CBA and the minister of economy should resign. Besides, according to him, the prosecutor's office should reveal the main purchasers of dollars in the past 5 days, as well as the amount of capital outflow from Armenia during that period.

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