YEREVAN. – 2015 was a difficult year, whereas 2016 is unpredictable.

Ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MP—and businessman—Alik Petrosyan told the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“It’s impossible to make predictions in Armenia’s economic life, since the situation is directly dependent on the exchange rate of the Russian ruble,” he added.

The RPA MP assessed the difficulty in the year past through the indicators of the agricultural product plant belonging to his family. Accordingly, in 2015, the plant products’ exports decreased by 50 percent.

“Our country’s economy suffers the most from the [Armenian] dram-ruble ratio because our main market is Russia,” Petrosyan noted.

The Armenian businessman MP does not have economic expectations from the currently strained Russia-Turkey relations, since Armenia’s products are not competitive in Russia in terms of pricing policy, as their cost price is too high.

In his view, a plan needs to be developed to reduce this cost price.

“Entering any world market with this pricing policy is hard because food products are getting cheaper in the world, [whereas they are] getting [more] expensive at us,” Alik Petrosyan concluded. “A development plan should be designed to resolve the [cost price] problems.”