Successful appointment

Although the appointment of Central Bank Chairman Tigran Sargsyan to the post of prime minister was an expected event, in fairness it should be admitted that the personnel policy of the new president was marked by a very good start. It is difficult to find a more successful candidate for the post of prime minister today. As the chairman of the Central Bank, Tigran Sargsyan has already shown himself as a purposeful and effective reformer, thanks to which the banking system of Armenia has become a kind of institutional oasis, sharply contrasting with other sectors of the country’s economy. Of course, this does not mean that the successful experience of this project can be mechanically extrapolated to the entire country. But this is not the main thing, this is just a technical issue. The main thing here is the internal motivation of the new prime minister as a reformer, which, no doubt, is clearly expressed. Without such motivation, it is impossible to implement any project, all the more strange. Thus, the first step in the right direction has been taken. But in order to consolidate the personnel success, now it is necessary to take a second, no less important step — to allow the new prime minister to form a new team on a professional basis. Obviously, the success of the government depends on the teamwork of the entire government. And party and cadre considerations here must be decisively relegated to the background. We have already gone through this. And the situation in the economy is not such as to dispose on a favorable tone. The time for reporting high rates of economic growth has passed. Even non-specialists have long understood that economic growth is not a development goal, but only an instrument for achieving development goals. A lot of systemic problems have accumulated in the Armenian economy, primarily in the tax and customs sphere, in the sphere of competition, in the judicial system, in the sphere of export-import, etc. Market institutions work very poorly. The relationship between business and regulatory authorities has become antagonistic, which is unacceptable and counterproductive. The current low-quality transfer economic growth urgently needs to be filled with a high-quality component, to which practically no attention has been paid so far. We were very late with this, so many illnesses took on a protracted, chronic nature. Today, correcting gross mistakes is delicately called second-generation reforms. Not the point is important. Everyone understands that they need to be urgently corrected. Possessing a systematic, project-based thinking, Tigran Sargsyan, like no one else, understands the depth of these problems. But the most important thing is that he is absolutely motivated to solve them. And this inspires serious optimism. We needed a prime minister with a new mindset. We got it.