Ministry of Economy and AmCham Discussion

On 18 February, 2021 the Ministry of Economy of RA in cooperation with AmCham in Armenia within the framework of the Armenia-US Trade and Investment Council, organized a meeting-discussion and a brainstorming session on the issues/recommendations that the companies or their clients face during the export/import processes from Armenia to the United States. The event was led by Mr. Varos Simonyan, Deputy Minister of the Economy.

Officials from the RA Ministry of Economy, State Revenue Committee, Food Safety Inspectorate – businessmen and AmCham Members participated in the event.

Mr. Varos Simonyan informed that the Armenia-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) is in force, and within this framework, a joint council on trade and economic cooperation has been established in order to promote trade and economic cooperation. Moreover, he added that the discussion was organized to intensify the existing cooperation and to activate business ties between these two countries.

Mr. Varos Simonyan mentioned that the main purpose of the meeting is to understand what barriers businesses face when entering the US market and how the state can support businesses entering other countries’ markets. How to better represent businesses to US businessmen and formulate a targeted agenda for our upcoming business meeting “to introduce and discuss with partners, as well as to provide solutions to problems at the state level”.

Ms. Karine Sarkissian, AmCham Executive Director also gave a thank you note to the public-private sector for the excellent cooperation and informed them about the franchising conference which will soon take place. Moreover, they will also try to intensify the cooperation within the framework of TIFA, to organize events that will activate Armenian-American business relations.

The businessmen mainly highlighted problems connected with the technical, documentary, logistical and other issues.

During the discussion, the representatives of the business community presented the problems and obstacles that they face during their activities, and also tried to jointly find different ways to solve existing problems and offer possible solutions.

As a result of the discussion, an agreement was reached to make such meetings regularly, to set up working groups when necessary, to organize separate sectoral meetings with the participation of ministries and representatives of the American Chamber of Commerce.