Budget 2026: Soft landing and spending 'checkbox'

SHANT NEWS · 22 minutes

“We had anomalous GDP growth of 12.6% in 2022, as well as 8.7% in 2023, which was mainly due to external sources, and it has exhausted itself. We did not generate the majority of that growth, 80%, but money coming from abroad did. If you are a family and you are thinking about your growth, you can increase your family budget by producing, creating value, or suddenly money comes from abroad. With this budget, the government expects a soft landing.”

“The effectiveness of spending is measured purely by execution: if it’s done, the checkbox is checked, then it’s effective. But the reality is that approximately 50% of any spending is not done until the last quarter, and in the last quarter, that spending, I won’t be afraid of that word, is quickly wasted to show that it’s effective. There’s also a simple truth about growth. Let’s imagine that in 2018 we had five families in Armenia, who received one, two, three, four and five drams respectively, and the average salary was 3 drams, then those same five families receive one, two, three, four and 10 drams, and the average is four drams, but the average statistical family lives the same way as in 2018.”