Yerevan /Mediamax/. Armenian authorities need political will to expose ties between oligopolies and officials, Head of World Bank (WB) Yerevan Office Aristomene Varoudakis stated today.

Mediamax reports that, speaking at a news conference, Aristomene Varoudakis stated that despite the fact that there are the first steps of the Armenian government in this direction, they are not sufficient and “the authorities should be more ambitious as to this issue”.

According to Varoudakis, one of the main lessons, which Armenia should learn from the crisis, is the necessity to diversify economy and increase its competitiveness, and oligopolies in a number of key markets and corruption, particularly in tax and customs bodies, hinder that process.

Head of WB Yerevan Office also pointed to the need of volume investments into transport infrastructures and information technologies in Armenia in order to reduce expenses.

Aristomene Varoudakis stated that decline in Armenian economy will make 16-17% following the results of 2009, and increase within the volume of 1.5% and temperate inflation are expected to take place in 2010.

 “Armenia’s external debt made 37% of GDP, and the correlation of the state debt to the GDP is expected to make 50% by 2011”, Aristomene Varoudakis stated, adding that Armenia needs to significantly improve its tax administration for efficient management of the state debt.

“Despite the crisis influence, Armenian banking system is stable and quite capitalized”, WB Yerevan Office Chief stated, expressing opinion that the share of idle credits in the banking system will be preserved within the current level of 8%.

Speaking about WB’s loan programs in Armenia, Aristomene Varoudakis informed that the volume of means, allocated by WB for Armenia made $280mln in 2009, and they plan to allocate loans for the country to realize 8 programs with the total cost of $160mln in 2010.