Editor’s note: The following is a translated and republished statement from ARFD.am. Translation from Armenian by our team; minor edits for clarity. Headline retained from the original.
I have previously touched on the state debt. I presented statistics on how much debt the country has, that 1 dram out of every 3 drams that enter the state budget goes to creditors. Today I will talk about people’s “own” debt.
People have been lending to each other probably since the day humanity was created. We borrow for various reasons: not having enough money for current expenses (this is the worst option), to make some big purchase (for example, you need to buy furniture or have surgery), to make an investment, or “you got carried away by gambling.” This is already a tragedy, in general, gambling (gambling with profit) is the shortest and surest path to ruin. But that’s not what we’re talking about now.
An analysis of a person’s/society’s/state’s credit portfolio can tell a lot about the borrower. Accordingly, let’s consider the “society’s credit burden.” As of September 30, 2025, the total volume of loans issued by Armenian banks amounted to 7 trillion 265 billion drams (including interbank loans).
23% of loans, 1 trillion 686.4 billion drams, are consumer loans. If we exclude interbank loans from the total loan portfolio and take into account that a certain volume of agricultural loans is actually of a consumer nature, then the share of consumer loans in the loan portfolio will be much larger. Mortgage loans make up 1 trillion 582 billion drams, 22% of the total portfolio. True, mortgage loans are not considered consumer credit (credit) according to the RA Law “On Consumer Crediting”, but, by and large, they are not related to entrepreneurial activity, not counting real estate and land purchased/renovated by legal entities with a mortgage loan. Consumer loans are about 2.5 times higher than the volume of loans provided to industry and 2.08 times the volume of construction loans that ensure Armenia’s economic “growth”.
Now let’s analyze in more detail the consumer loans “spoiled” by the Armenian society, and especially the bad loans. As of October 1, 2025, the total principal amount of bad consumer loans with a “term” of up to three years is 264.5 billion drams. If we add the overdue interest, penalties/fines, and other accrued overdue liabilities, the entire debt burden will exceed 575 billion drams. Can you imagine what a number we are talking about?
Armenia’s 2026 defense budget is less than that amount.
And now let’s turn to the number of borrowers. The number of people with unreliable consumer loans up to 250 thousand drams (principal amount) is 136 thousand 511 people. In other words, 136,511 people are unable to repay a loan of up to 250 thousand drams. Some have not been able to pay that amount for three years. The unpaid principal of 250 thousand has probably already accumulated double penalties and fines, the borrowers have “fallen” into the Enforcement Service, are fleeing from banks, or have left the country. 136,511 people are not only unable to repay the loan themselves, but also do not have a relative/friend/acquaintance to help them repay the loan… This is the reality of our country, this is the social picture. 63,270 people have bad loans of 250,001 – 500,000 drams, 34,202 people have bad loans of 500,001-750,000 drams, and 22,453 people have bad loans of 750,001-1,000,000 drams.
The number of small bad borrowers is greater than the number of borrowers with relatively larger bad loans. This is another argument in favor of the claim that mainly representatives of socially vulnerable groups have buckled under the burden of consumer loans. 26,395 people have bad loans of 1,00,001-1,500,000 drams, and 47,145 have bad loans of more than 1,500,001 drams. The range between these two groups is larger, but if we divide them into intervals of 250,000 drams, the pattern will remain the same.
If we add up the numbers of borrowers with bad loans in different loan groups, we get 329,926 people.
I do not exclude that 5-10% of borrowers have more than one bad loan. Let’s assume the number of bad borrowers is 300,000 people.
The adult population permanently residing in Armenia is 2,500,000 people. In other words, 1 out of every 8 adults is unable to service their consumer loan, is a DAJC “client”. A society in which one out of every 8 adults is an unreliable borrower cannot be considered prosperous. This is one of the first signs of a social disaster. A state buried in debt, a society buried under debt… This is the consequence of Nikol Pashinyan’s economic policy, not a street paved with debt.
PS: For comparison, in 2017, only 47,670 people, almost three times less than today, had a bad consumer loan of up to 250,000 drams…
Artur Khachatryan,
member of the ARF, deputy of the “Armenia” faction
