YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 16, NOYAN TAPAN. Experts of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) forecast an average economic growth of 3.3% for transitional countries in 2010. Helena Schweiger, a principal economist of EBRD, said at the February 16 press conference that a 2% economic growth is forecast for Armenia this year. According to her, the construction sector will recover slowly, and exports will grow due to the increased demand for Armenian goods. She reminded that the first stage of the global financial and economic crisis did not affect Armenia thanks to the country's banking system, but later the negative effects of the crisis became evident. There was 36.4% decline in the construction sector ensuring the major part of economic growth, and remittances from abroad fell sharply. H. Schweiger said that the average economic decline in regional countries made 6.1%. Armenia is among the five countries where a two-digit decline was recorded. EBRD representative Franklin Steves noted that under conditions of the crisis, the implementation of reforms became difficult in transitional countries because the level of unemployment has risen and the middle class - the motivation of reforms has mainly suffered. The experts expressed an opinion that the best way of overcoming the crisis is to improve the business climate, which should be done by the government. In their words, despite the fact that concession loans make up most of Armenia's foreign debt, a debt repayment problem will arise starting from 2013. They underlined that ensuring economic growth in the country is a proper way of foreign debt servicing.

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