YEREVAN, JUNE 11, NOYAN TAPAN. "The growth of consumer prices endangers efficient implementation of the poverty reduction program, so this problem is in the center of attention of the government," the prime minister Tigran Sargsian said at the National Assembly on June 11. Answering a deputy's question about why the Armenian market does not respond to the sharp fall in prices of some goods in international market, the prime minister said that inflationary pressures from international market still remain. In particular, he indicated fuel prices which have risen 4fold in the past 4 years. According to T. Sargsian, sharp fluctuations of prices in internatinal market - both their rise and fall do not affect directly the market prices in Armenia. He said that the government is developing a program on inflation control, which has 4 directions. The first direction is implementation of the tax and budgetary policy, as it is necessary to have a restraining budget in order to restrain inflationary pressures. The second one is the monetary and credit policy of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) because the CBA must raise refinancing interest rates in order to control inflation. The third direction is creation of a competition field. The State Commission on Protection of Economic Competition, which conducts complex checks in those markets where prices rise quickly but fall slowly due to the absence of competition, should play a great role in this issue. The commission informs tax bodies about the results of its checks, while tax bodies also conduct checks and reveal cases of superprofits. And the fourth direction is growth of agricultural production which has a restraining impact on the level of prices due to the large share of foodstuffs in the consumer basket. The prime minister underlined the necessity of introducing some competitive mechanisms to prevent resellers from dictating their prices to farmers.

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