YEREVAN, OCTOBER 6, NOYAN TAPAN. The United Labor Party (ULP) expresses its discontent with the start of "election actions" in the parliament because such actions may prevent the RA National Assembly from functioning effectively. Gurgen Arsenian, Head of the ULP faction, stated this during the October 6 parliamentary briefing. According to him, at the moment the most important task of the parliament is to discuss and pass such a draft state budget for 2007 that will promote a sustainable economic development of the country. Whereas, in the deputy's words, the ULP has concerns that the 2007 budget may be "election". "We don't claim that this is the case, we only express our concerns over it," the faction head noted. The ULP faction is aslo concerned about the draft law on making an amendment to the 2006 RA state budget that the government has submitted to the National Assembly. The draft is related to inflation. The faction secretary Grigor Ghonjeyan said that the government proposes fixing inflation at 5% plus-minus 1.5% next year instead of 3% inflation. It means that the government intends to fix the possible inflation from 3.5% to 6.5% by law. In the opinion of G. Ghonjeyan, doubling inflation compared with the amount envisaged by the current law and setting its interval at a level where the maximim exceeds the minimim level twofold will become a subject of hot discussions in the National Assemly, because deputies have long had an intention to raise problems related to currency exchange rate and to get an exhaustive answer.

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