YEREVAN (Armradio)– The Long anticipated North Avenue was inaugurated Friday during a special ceremony attended by President Robert Kocharian, Mayor of Yerevan Yervand Zakharyan, representatives of legislative and executive bodies and the City Hall staff and residents of the capital city.
"The construction of the North Avenue is a result of a time, when we managed to establish an atmosphere of business, guaranteed and effective investmen’s and economic growth," said the Mayor of Yerevan. "The unprecedented increase of the volume of construction works in the capital, which reached 40-45% annually, is one of the real reflections of stable economic development in our country,"
Congratulating everyone on the occasion, President Kocharian noted that on first seeing the model of the North Avenue he immediately decided that it had to be constructed in as short a period of time as possible. "But even then I could not imagine what kind of influence this avenue would have on the economic development of Armenia and on the construction sector in general, said president Kocharian.
"The process showed that construction has become the main driving force for Armenia’s economic development. More than 20 percent of our GDP comes from the field of construction. This means that tens of thousand of people have found work in this sphere and thousands of families are earning money to improve the quality of their life," the President said.
"We adopted a rather serious legislative package to encourage this process. Today we are actively working with the German KfW Bank in this direction," said Kocharian as he noted the projects influence on the mortgage market.
"The volume of construction pushed the mortgage market forward, and we shall continue moving in this direction. The loans must be given for a longer period of time, up to 20 years of maturity, the interest rate should decrease and the state certainly will participation in this realm," added the president.
According to Kocharian, if the trend of the recent years continues, in two to three years a reasonable mortgage maturity standard and interest rates will be set.
