Yerevan/Mediamax/.  Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said that the country’s banking sector is better prepared for a crisis than in other CIS countries.

The Prime Minister said this in his interview to RBK, Mediamax reports:

“It happened due to the fact that the reform in banking sector was completed earlier than in other countries and there was no “hot” money in our banking sector. It was strictly controlled and the public reports of the banks complied with the reality - there were no bad assets and the liquidity was sustained on a very high level. The first wave of the global crisis passed us by unlike Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine where “hot” money was attracted from international commercial markets”, said Tigran Sargsyan.

He noted that only the second wave of the crisis touched Armenia through the real sector.

“First of all, it was linked to the situation in Russia. There are several reasons for that. First of all, the share of Russian enterprises in real estate sector is rather significant. The second aspect is connected to the fact that main investments in Armenia are made from Russia.  The third factor is private transfers. A huge number of Armenian citizens work in Russia and approximately USD1bln of annual private transfers are of considerable importance to Armenia”, said the PM.

“The main lesson we learnt from the crisis is that we should pay more attention to the industrial policy, diversify the structure of the gross national product and implement reforms in the real sector at a higher pace”, said Tigran Sargsyan.