(Saturday, September 30)
“168 Zham” reports that the Armenian government plans to spend over140 billion drams ($293 million) on debt repayments next year. The sum is equivalent to approximately 10 percent overall public spending. The paper says that the government is due to spend 120 billion on debt serving this year. It says that despite this mounting debt burden the government will borrow more loans, mostly from external sources, in 2018.
“Zhamanak” accuses Prime Minister Karen Karapetian of not honoring his pledge to attract multimillion-dollar investment in Armenia’s economy. The paper points to a record-low amount of foreign direct investment shown by official statistics in the first half of this year. It also claims that the premier has created a favorable business environment only for Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetian. The government must therefore step down, concludes “Zhamanak.”
“Aravot” disagrees with criticisms of President Serzh Sarkisian’s decision to pardon Vazgen Khachikian, the former head of Armenia’s state pension fund who was arrested in 2012 and subsequently sentenced to 12 years in prison on corruption charges. “If Khachikian had spent 12, not 5, years in jail … would anybody have felt greater relief?” argues the paper. “Would a lack of justice have been addressed? Would corruption in our country have decreased? Why are people so unjustly cruel?” It says the problem is not the length of Khachikian’s imprisonment but the fact that many other corrupt officials are not prosecuted.
(Naira Bulghadarian)