Armenia is ready to take unpopular steps including cutting state spending and eliminating barriers to private investment in order to get the ailing economy back on a sustainable footing by next year, its prime minister said.
Armenia's growth rate slowed to 0.2 percent in 2016 from 3 percent in 2015. That was below the government's target of 2.2 percent, a figure Karen Karapetyan said should be exceeded as soon as this year, Reuters reports.
"Regular structural reforms will be implemented in Armenia, even if these reforms are unpopular," the prime minister told the agency in an interview.
Cutting administrative expenses, and plans to reduce the budget deficit to 2.7 percent of national output this year from the 5.9 percent expected for 2016, might impact economic growth. But the measures were necessary, he said.
"It will have a negative impact ... but we want to compensate it through private investment," Karapetyan said.
"I think we will be able to withstand (problems) and achieve 3.2 percent growth this year."
Karapetyan, 53, a former head of national gas distributing company ArmRosGazprom and mayor of the capital Yerevan from 2010-2011, was appointed prime minister in September.
He said that his government would also focus on fighting corruption and "eliminating all barriers that impede business from developing".
In its 2016 Corruption Perception Index, Transparency Int...
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