YEREVAN (RFE/RL) - President Robert Kocharian last Thursday gave an overall positive assessment to the eight-month track record of Prime Minister Andranik Markarian's government, saying that it has made real efforts to bring the Armenian economy out of stagnation.

"The government did get down to business," he said. "It has been trying to improve the situation we were in at the beginning of the year. I think that we have registered achievements."

Kocharian was speaking to reporters after presiding over a cabinet session, the last in 2000. Ministers said some 40 issues were on the agenda, most of them related to the state budget for next year.

Markarian told reporters that he has had a difficult time since his appointment as prime minister at the height of a serious political crisis last May. He claimed his government has since had no major failures.

Markarian's toughest challenge yet was a grave budgetary crisis resulting from the combined effects of worse-than-expected collection of revenues and a delay with the release of further World Bank credits.