YEREVAN, MAY 19, NOYAN TAPAN - ARMENIANS TODAY. This year Armenia has quite a considerable budget deficit, which makes up 6% of GDP - 193 billion drams. Armenian Minister of Finance Tigran Davtian said this at the question and answer session at the National Assembly on May 19. He pointed out that in the coming years the government's task is to sharply reduce the deficit because the budget deficit is one of the major components of inflation. The minister also discussed the problem of agricultural loans. According to him, about 72 thousand agricultural loans were provided in 2009. Only in 360 cases, farmers had problems related to these loans which is 0.5% of the total number of loans, the minister said.

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