NAZIK ARMENAKYAN
ArmeniaNow
Price of food products have risen more than 20 percent
Armenia experienced six percent inflation over the first half of this year, conditioned in part by up to 25 percent increase in cost of food products, compared to last year. Experts don’t see any decrease in the near future.
As compared to June, last year, vegetable prices rose by 21 percent, fruit by 17 percent, meat by 13 percent, and sugar by 6 percent, this year.
“Abrupt deflation was registered in July, last year; however, judging by the current tendencies, I do not think that seasonal food products [fruit, vegetable] will have such a deflation, this year,” Gurgen Martirosyan, Head of Prices Statistics and International Comparison Department of the National Statistical Service of Armenia, said in a press conference today in Yerevan.
Prices rise in Armenia year by year. Over the past five years cost of living has nearly doubled. Foodstuffs rose by 32 percent; non-food items by 24 percent, and public services by 40 percent.
Economists, however, are sure that the inflation is, in fact, even higher, accusing the National Statistical Service of presenting an unrealistic image of inflation in Armenia, which, in its turn, gives authorities an opportunity to present an unrealistic economic growth.
“Even without holding a professional monitoring, it is possible to see with the naked eye that our life became doubly expensive, and this year especially everything is quite expensive. Simply the indexes are hidden, in order not to raise the sum of the consumer basket, and hence – the minimum wage amount,” economist Narine Sukiasyan, professor of the Slavonic University, Yerevan, told ArmeniaNow.
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