ArmInfo. The volume of total foreign investments in the real sector of the Armenian economy grew by 17.7% in 2019, amounting to $ 2.97 billion, while a year earlier the growth was more modest - 7.9%. However, in their structure, the FDI volume decreased by 2.5%, amounting to $ 592 million, against a more significant decline of 11.2% in 2018. This is evidenced by the data of the RA Statistical Committee on Investments for 2019. According to statistics, the share of FDI in total foreign investment continues to decline: from 35.2% in 2016 to 20% in 2019.
By country, Russia holds the lead in terms of total investments and FDI - for 2019 $ 1.02 billion (with a slowdown in annual growth from 23.5% to 3.4%), including FDI - $ 386.1 million (with a deterioration in annual dynamics from 31.7% growth to 8.4% decline). The second position was assigned to Germany - $ 684.6 million (with a slowdown in annual growth from 54.9% to 16.1%), of which $ 20.7 million is FDI (with a turn in annual dynamics from 41.6% growth to 51.5 % recession). TOP-3, as before, closes Cyprus, from which investments for a total of $ 75.7 million came in 2019 (with a slowdown in the annual decline from 71.5% to 12.7%), of which FDI - $ 26.2 million (with a slowdown in annual growth from 48 , 7% to 15.1%).
In 2019, in the volume of total foreign investment, the share of Russia decreased from 38.1% to 34.3%, Germany - from 23.4% to 23.1%, Cyprus - from 3.4% to 2.6%. In the total FDI, the share of Russia decreased from 69.4% to 65.2%, Germany - from 7% to 3.5%, and Cyprus, on the contrary, grew from 3.8% to 4.4%.
Disaggregated by economic sectors, the largest subsidence of infusions was recorded in the mining industry, where the lion's share of investments comes from the offshore zone of Jersey. In particular, the total volume of investments (and this is completely FDI) from Jersey at the end of December 2019 remained at 138.7 billion drams ($ 289 million - gross flow for 1988-2019), without changing in volume from April 2018, which means no injections. This is most likely due to the actual suspension of the Amulsar Gold Ore Program (due to the actions of environmental activists hindering the work of Lidian Armenia, which blocked the road to the deposit since 2018, in view of the so-called “new environmental factors” identified by the inspection body - Ed.).
According to updated this May World Bank forecasts that the ratio of net FDI to Armenia’s GDP in 2020 will drop to 1.8% from the actual 2.2% in 2019.
It should be noted that the RA Statistical Committee publishes data on foreign investments once a quarter, indicating them in dram equivalent and in gross flow - the accumulated volume (without repayment) from 1988 to the reporting date, in this case to December 31, 2019. To prepare this material, ArmInfo specialists independently calculated annual data, taking as a basis the gross flow statistical data for the respective periods of 2019 and 2018. (Estimated rate of dram on 12/31/2019 amounted to 479.70 dr./$ 1).