ArmInfo. The foreign direct investments (FDI) of Iran in Armenia's economy are among the lowest investments in the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). According to the findings of the report "EAEU and Eurasia: Monitoring and Analysis of Direct Investments" prepared by the Eurasian Development Bank's (EDB) Centre for Integration Studies, in 2014 the Iranian FDI in Armenia totaled $6 million - as much as in Kazakhstan and by $5 million more than in Kyrgyzstan.
In the meantime, by late 2014 the total investments of Iran in the EEU countries amounted to $966 million. The biggest Iranian FDI was in Belarus - $731, Tajikistan - $201 mln. Russia received $21mln Iranian FDI.
The analysts of the Centre for Integration Studies stress that the Iranian private investors are elaborating expensive projects in the electric power engineering sector of Armenia, particularly, the construction of Meghri HPP on the river Arax and the Iran-Armenia electric power transmission line, however, their implementation is suspended due to the shortage of funds. One of the most important factors of active Iranian FDI is the geographic location of Iran and its cultural and historical similarity with the nations living in the neighboring countries. This factor ensures a quite high level of penetration of Iranian small and partially medium-sized businesses in the countries of Transcaucasia and Central Asia: Iranians are actively working in Tajikistan, Iranian Azerbaijanis (the second largest ethnos) - in Azerbaijan, etc. In the meantime, they say that for the Iranian SMEs, which have traditionally been geographically mobile, the "effect of neighborhood" cannot be called crucial despite its importance. In the sectoral structure of Iranian FDI in the EEU countries, construction and the financial sector are prevailing over other sectors with 42% and 20%, respectively. Infrastructure networks rank next (19% of accumulated FDI). The share of transport was 15%, and the share of the agrarian sector was only 2%.
To note, according to the Armenian National Statistics Service, in Jan-Sept 2015 the total Iranian investments in Armenia's economy amounted to 315.8 mln AMD (about $700 thsd), whereas the FDI had a negative indicator of 98.3 mln AMD (about $200 thsd), which actually demonstrates the outflow of Iranian FDI from Armenia.