"Past" daily writes: According to official statistics, the number of tourists visiting Armenia decreased by 6.9 percent in January-September, which was mainly due to the 21.6 percent decrease in the number of tourists from Russia.
As much as the current authorities tried to give this situation a "political" tone in connection with the opposition rallies, experts in the field say that this is, to put it mildly, a frivolous assessment. In fact, there are quite a few reasons with serious consequences.
Economist Suren Parsyan notes that approximately 70,000 less Russian tourists have come to Armenia in the first ten months of this year, and remittances from Russia have decreased.
Many small and medium-sized businesses report that their turnover has decreased, Russians have decreased, their payments have decreased," said Parsyan in a conversation with "Past", adding that it definitely has a negative impact on small and medium-sized businesses in particular. The restriction of MIR cards. The other day, the Minister of Economy announced that the government has a 5-year credit agreement with the World Bank, within the framework of which it is planned to acquire 100 million dollars in credit funds and provide the Republic of Armenia with to establish 10 tourism clusters in marzes.
In other words, Armenia will go under another debt, even though the debt burden is already too heavy for Armenia for the servicing of the state debt. Our state debt has become quite costly in recent years, and this cost will increase even more," Suren Parsyan told us.
