YEREVAN, MARCH 4, NOYAN TAPAN. In order to avoid inflation risks in case of a floating exchange rate, changes should be made in the tax and budgetary policy. That is, as economist Andranik Tevanian stated at the March 4 press conference, it is necessary to change the structure of the budget, reducing both the revenues and expenditures by 20%. Besides, the economist proposed to withdraw cash registers from use, introduce fixed payments, and only after ensuring a competition field, to use cash registers again. In his words, the bases of the financial crisis in Armenia were laid in 2007 when the Republican Party of Armenia took the whole control package from the National Assembly, changing the economic policy, after which expenditures of the budget increased from 1.7 billion USD to 2.5 billion USD. The next year the expenditures have amounted to 3.1 billion USD, which is a heavier tax burden on businessmen, especially on small and medium ones. As a result of this policy, according to A. Tevanian, the small and medium business has found itself in a hard situation in 2008, and since the second half of 2008, there has been a decline in the amount of remittances to Armenia, construction volumes, etc. "2009 will be a hard year for small and medium businessmen. The economic crisis has no relation to it, this is a consequence of redistribution of the economy," A. Tevanian underlined, adding that "there is also a smell of criminals in the air".

---