FEB. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Price inflation in Armenia is increasingly diverging between food and non-food items, the presidential adviser to the National Statistics Agency, Gurgen Martirosyan, said. In January, he said, food prices were 7.4% higher than in December 2016. Non-food prices, though, fell 3.4% and services by fell 1.8%.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Armenia-registered subsidiary of Canada’s Lydian mining has taken out a loan of $50m with ING Bank to fund buying equipment at its gold mine in southern Armenia. Lydian said that the cash would be used to buy crushing, conveying and electrical equipment for its 100%-owned Amulsar Gold Project. It expects gold production to begin in 2018.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The McDonald’s fast food chain has no intention of opening a restaurant in Armenia, its Europe spokesperson Sanjay Mistry said, dampening media speculation that Georgian businessman Temur Chkonia was planning to extend his McDonald’s franchise to Yerevan. In 2016 McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
YEREVAN, FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A group of Western finance organisations lead by The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) agreed to lend ContourGlobal Hydro Cascade, a subsidiary of the US group by the same name, $140m to upgrade the Armenian Vorotan hydropower plant.
Upgrading the 404MW Vorotan hydropower plant is considered vital to boosting Armenia’s green power output. It was built by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and has only been patched up in a piecemeal fashion since.
Importantly, too, the upgrade scheme will created hundreds of jobs in the mountainous Syunik province of southeast Armenia, the rural and underdeveloped region where the plant is sited.
“This is the first time we are putting together very large, long-term financing package for an infrastructure project in Armenia,” the IFC said.
The deal was struck on Dec. 29. It involved a $45m loan from the IFC, $65m from FMO, the Dutch development bank, and $30m from DEG, the German Investment and Development Corporation.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a congress in Yerevan, Gagik Tsarukyan one of the wealthiest Armenians, was officially sworn in as chairman of the Prosperous Armenia party. He had quit the party in 2015 after a row with Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan but said last month that he wanted to return for Armenia’s parliamentary elections in April. Analysts said that his return was designed to pull anti-government votes away from the real Armenian opposition parties.
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(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)
JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian defence minister Vigen Sargsyan travelled to Tehran for a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Dehqan in which both sides pledged to improve their military ties. Neighbours, Armenia and Iran have become increasingly close over the past couple of years, boosting military, economic and trade relations.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Exports from Armenia grew by 20% to $1.8b in 2016, the state statistics service reported. Russia remains the biggest trade partner with total bilateral trade of nearly $1.4b, compared to China which has bilateral trade with Armenia of $454m. Bilateral trade with Russia was up by 15%, indicating a general pick up in the economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia and Armenia are likely to set up a new airline to fly routes between Yerevan and Moscow, Vahan Martirosyan, Armenia’s communications and technology minister, was quoted as saying. Armenia has been without a national flag-carrier since 2013 when Armavia was declared bankrupt. The privately-owned Armenia, a low-cost airline, started flights last year to Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The leaders of Armenia’s three main genuine opposition parties — the Republican party, Bright Armenia and Civil Contract — have confirmed that they will fight a parliamentary election set for April as a united opposition bloc. The bloc is called Yelik, Way Out. Leaders of Yelik said that they are in negotiations with the Heritage party, the fourth main opposition party, for it join too.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a partial victory for Armenia, Denmark’s parliament voted to adopt a resolution that criticised a ban in Turkey on using the term genocide to describe the killing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians at the end of World War II by Ottoman Turks. Parliament stopped short of describing the killings as genocide, saying that it traditionally didn’t issue judgements on historical events. While Armenia has pushed hard for foreign governments to recognise the killings as a genocide, Turkey has refuted all allegations of an organised genocide.
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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)