"LUYS" Foundation analyzed the socio-economic developments of the RA economy in 2024. in January-September.
🔹 The growth rate of economic activity continued to slow down in January-September, being lower by 0.3 percentage points compared to January-August. In September, the TAC slightly accelerated, but remains much lower than the increases at the beginning of the year, as the factors providing high growth are gradually neutralizing. Moreover, since the process of re-export of jewelry products started in the last months of the previous year and increased the indicators of that period, a significant slowdown in growth rates will be observed at the end of the current year due to the high base effect.
🔹 The structure of the economy is deteriorating. The factor ensuring high growth in the structure of both industry and export is jewelry products. In other sub-sectors, quite low growths or declines are recorded, which is naturally a negative phenomenon and can cause long-term problems in the economy. Excluding jewelry activities (product group "precious and semi-precious stones, precious metals and articles thereof"), the decline in total exports was 9.5%, and the decline in industry was 0.3%.
🔹 Inflation continues to slow despite the significant reduction in the monetary policy interest rate. During the current year, the Central Bank of Armenia reduced the monetary policy interest rate (MPP) by around 1.75 percentage points, but during the same period, inflation remained at a fairly low level, and continued to slow down during the previous two months. At the same time, interest rates on government bonds have slightly increased in recent months, somewhat deviating from the trend of moving in the same direction as the usually observed interest rate.
🔹 The indicators of the state budget were significantly underachieved. 2024 In January-September, compared to the state budget plan, tax revenues were underachieved by 148.6 billion, and expenses by 224.7 billion drams. At the same time, capital expenditures were under-executed by around 66.4 billion drams (about 18.0%), reflecting the unresolved issues regarding the implementation of capital expenditures.
Full analysis:here.
