YEREVAN. - Economic indicators in the Republic of Armenia (RA) have sharply increased ahead of the two previous national elections, whereas these indicators were lot more modest in the other years, in the same months, according to Haykakan Zhamanak (Armenian Time) newspaper.

"Yesterday, RA Finance Minister Vardan Aramyan did not even deny that these trends are due to the [forthcoming parliamentary] elections, but stated that he has no reason to doubt official statistics.

"But the entire problem is that our National Statistical Service presented strong 'growths' in January and February of this year; [but] election campaigning (...) was banned at that time. 

"And considering the arguments brought by the minister himself, we can say that the unusual growths recorded especially in January-February are not reliable, to put it mildly, and they rather have a[n] [election] campaign objective," wrote Haykakan Zhamanak.