ArmInfo. Suren Karayan, the Minister of Economic Development and Investments of Armenia and Norair Aghayan, the Director of Janfida Agri Holding on June 5 signed a memorandum aimed at organizing the export of Armenian agricultural production to the Middle East, as well as the promotion of local brands.
According to the information shared with ArmInfo by the press office of the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments, following Suren Karayan, the export could be organized within the implementation of such a tool like state insurance is. The issue of organizing more available transportations to Gulf countries for potential exporters, through negotiations with transportation-logistics companies, was also discussed. Parties discussed also the options of transportation by cargo plains.
The representatives of Janfida Agri Holding JSC informed that they plan to export 500-600 tons of agricultural production as the minimum in 2017 to the Gulf countries. At that, Norair Aghayan mentioned the huge potential of Armenianagricultural products of high quality at the UAE market. According to the National Statistics Service data, the foreign trade turnover of Armenia with UAE in 2016 formed USD 199,3 mln with annual growth for 2,3 times. Particularly, the export grew 7 times up to USD 63,8 mln, within the import growth for 27,4% up to USD 55,5 mln. In QI 2017 versus the same period of 2016 Armenia increased its foreign trade turnover with UAE in 2,7 times up to USD 43,9 mln within similar growth of export and import in 2,7 times.
To recall, in February 2017, Prime Minister of Armenia Karen Karapetyan announced the possibility of attracting investments of $ 3.2 billion in the coming years. Of these, 830 - 840 million are expected this year. In April the country's Ministry of Finance reduced these investment expectations to $ 450 million. In 9 months of 2016, foreign direct investments in Armenia amounted to only $ 92 million. Meanwhile, the government of the country in 2017 forecasts an economic growth by 3.9% with an upward trend in 2018 and in 2019 by 4% and 4.1% respectively. The IMF forecast is more modest - 2.9%.