Armenian News - NEWS.am presents a daily digest of Armenia’s top news as of 20.02.2020.

The search was conducted on the territory between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

As a result of the search efforts, the relics of a deceased Azerbaijani serviceman were detected at a distance of a couple of meters from the Azerbaijani military posts and was evacuated.

All the security conditions were ensured for the Azerbaijani search group to work throughout the period of the act permitted by the Armenian side.

  • Armenia recorded a 7.6% economic growth last year, the highest record since 2008, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan said.

During the government’s session on Thursday, Pashinyan asked whether the economic growth is higher than expected, and was told GDP growth met the expectations.

“So we can state the economic growth in 2019 stood at 7.6%, it means that we have achieved the highest growth since 2008, and I am convinced that we will have a higher rate by 2020,” he said.

Accordingly, it is envisaged to allocate 2 billion 787 million 366 thousand drams from the government reserve fund, of which 2,553 billion drams shall be allocated to the CEC, and 234,317 million drams to the Police.

  • Armenia is the world’s third most militarized country, according to the 2019 edition of the Global Militarization Index (GMI).

Armenia is behind Israel and Singapore only, and tops the list of most heavily militarized countries in Europe.

 “Both Baku and Yerevan are currently modernising the old army and air force weapons systems, for which they have awarded various large-scale contracts to Russian weapons manufacturers. The result is rising military spending on both sides,” the authors say.

Azerbaijan’s is tenth in the list, while Armenia’s other neighbors – Georgia and Turkey – are the 49th and 20th respectively.

The staff congratulated mother who gave birth to a giant weighing 5.5 kilos and measuirng 60 centimeters in length.

  • Armenian national squad are still 102nd in the updated FIFA standings. The team has not played any games since the previous ranking, and their once 30th ranking was a record-breaking high for the country.

Belgium, France, Brazil, England, Uruguay, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, and Colombia are in the top ten.