There is no capital flight from Armenia, Central Bank Chairman Artur Javadyan told journalists in parliament. Asked whether, alongside the fight against corruption, there have been cases of individuals taking capital out of the country, Javadyan replied that if there were an outflow, international reserves would not be increasing.
“If we are talking about capital flight from Armenia, in that case we would not have bought 500 million dollars. We would now have had to sell if there were an outflow. But we have bought. That means there is an inflow, not an outflow. If we see such phenomena, we have the appropriate services,” said the Central Bank chairman.
During his conversation with journalists, the Central Bank chairman also complained that Central Bank employees’ salaries are low and not competitive compared with the private sector, namely commercial banks. “According to the law on the Central Bank, our salaries must not be lower than the average salaries of commercial banks. Alas, at the moment they are very low, and we do not want to set that pace in salary increases, because commercial banks’ salaries are rising at a higher pace. In recent years we have only addressed natural increases related to experience and so on,” he said.
Because of low salaries, according to Javadyan, there is an outflow of staff from the sector. “We have staff turnover. On average we have 50-60 people a year; this year more than 100 employees have left,” Javadyan noted. He added that at the moment there is no need for a change in the law to increase Central Bank employees’ salaries. “But I want to say that at the moment commercial banks are planning an 8 percent salary increase for next year. We have proposed 1.9 percent, and that entirely relates to natural growth; we have not planned a salary increase,” he noted.
