At a National Assembly hearing today on the proposed state budget for the 2010 fiscal year, Finance Minister Tigran Davtyan announced that Armenia’s foreign debt would total 3 billion 960 million AMD, or 16.3% of the GDP. "In 2010 we’ll have at least 1-2% GDP growth," Mr. Davtyan stated, "This is a very cautious number, and it’s not ruled out that in case of optimistic economic developments, this will become the minimal level predicted for the coming year." Speaking about the anti-crisis program of the government, Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said "those measures are already yielding tangible results." PM Sargsyan promised that social expenditures would not be cut in 2010. Hearings of the 2010 draft budget 201 will continue through November 13, after which the MP’s will send written proposals to the government and the amended draft budget will be resubmitted to the parliament for ratification. At a press conference after the hearings, Bagrat Asatryan, former president of the RoA Central Bank and Prosperous Armenia Party MP Vardan Bostanjyan, expressed their views about the draft budget and the government’s anti-crisis economic program. Mr. Asatryan stated that the economic situation in Armenia continued to remain poor. "Nothing is being done in Armenia. There are no positive expectations and the year continues to be one of the worst in the country’s economic history. For the past nine months we have witnessed a 18% economic slip." He described the 2010 draft budget as "weak" and said that the budget was artificially undervalued. "It would appear that rather than attempting to resolve certain problems they would prefer to be able to declare at the year’s end that they have surpassed stated objectives." Mr. Bostanjyan also said that the indices in the budget weren’t all that welcomed but given the crisis conditions some degree of fallback was to be expected. He argued that the prime directive was to meet the challenges posed by the crisis. "We aren’t so powerful a nation that we can implement one overall anti-crisis program that would serve as a ‘magic bullet’. I said previously that any anti-crisis program in Armenia would assume certain financial measures to be taken as well. If those measures are lacking, than the best of anti-crisis programs will also fail. All I can say today is that some of those necessary measures have been taken," Mr. Bostanjyan said.