Expert: Armenia in need of powerful economic development plan

YEREVAN, October 18. /ARKA/. Armenia needs to work out a serious economic development project to resolve its problems, Vladimir Lepekhin, the director of the Eurasian Economic Community Institute and a member of the Eurasian Economic Integration Bureau of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Friday in Novosti International Press Center in Yerevan. 

“It should be a project of dynamic economic development, a modernization project,” he said. 

The expert said that the slowdown in economic growth in Armenia against fast-growing neighboring economies disrupts the balance in the South Caucasus region.  

If Armenia has such a powerful modernization plan, he said, it would make Russia’s assistance to its communications, atomic energy and mining industries more effective. 

Lepekhin said instead of asking Russian support to advance this or that industry, or resume  the operation of the Abkahzian railway, Yerevan should get down to creating  a real modernization project.

‘The current modus operandi of Yerevan is not effective, not because of Russian leadership’s opposition but because of huge inertia,’ he said adding that neither Russian foreign ministry nor big capital would do this without president Putin’s order.

In early September, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, made a joint statement, according to which Armenia has decided to join the Customs Union and to take part in formation of the Eurasian Union in the future.  

The announcement came as Armenia was poised to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union aimed at making European Union’s ties with Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova and Georgia closer. ---0----