Armenian government to allocate 108.25 mln drams for wine growing and making

ArmInfo. The Armenian  government will allocate 108.25 mln drams to the Winegrowing and  Winemaking Fund of Armenia. The relevant decision was approved at the  government's session on December 22. Minister of Agriculture of  Armenia Ignatiy Arakelyan stated that these funds are allocated for  ensuring stable work of the organization.  To note, the Winegrowing  and Winemaking Fund of Armenia was established by the government's  decision from June 23, 2016. The Fund's activities will be aimed at  solving problems related to increasing quality of the wine products  and ensuring their competitiveness on internal and foreign markets.  The fund will also organize events to raise awareness of the Armenian  wine brand. 

To note, Head of Armenia's Winemakers' Union Avag Harutyunyan stated  at the today's press-conference that Armenia as a country producing  wine is not taken seriously on the international platform, those  countries are taken seriously that hold active export policy.  According to him neighboring Georgia has more beneficial position due  to active governmental support that Armenia lacks. 

According to statistical data the aggregate amount of wine production  dropped by 4% in the country totaling 5931.9 thsd liters. At the same  time according to the data of the Customs Service export of wine from  Armenia dropped by 31.5% in 2015 from 2120.7 thsd liters to 1451.6  thsd liters. At the same time customs cost of exported wine totaled  4.1 mln USD in 2015 instead of 6.3 mln USD in 2014. As for the main  export market-Russia supply of Armenian wine totaled only 1150.6 thsd  liters in 2015 (2.9 mln USD) versus 1713.8 thsd liters (4.4 mln USD)  in 2014. However, when Armenian exporters started to face problems on  the Russian market the situation related to diversification of  markets has notably improved.  Local producers started to expand  their presence on new markets and now our wines are sold in such  countries as Japan, Germany, UK, supplies to US are growing. 

Meanwhile, negative influence of devaluation of Russian Ruble  continues. Despite the fact that in first half of 2016 export of wine  from Armenia grew by 24.7% y-o-y to 779.9 thsd liters the prices are  so low that a lot of producers sell their products suffering losses  just to keep their position on the market. At the same time according  to the Customs Service of Armenia customs cost of exported Armenian  wine to Russia in Jan-June 2016 totaled 1.8 mln USD versus 1.2 mln  USD for the same period of 2015,