In 2024, the European Union’s (EU) share in Armenia’s exports was 4.7 percent, while in 2025 it has already increased to 7.9 percent, almost doubled, Minister of Economy Gevorg Papoyan announced at a press conference Friday.

“Two circumstances were important here; one is that EU exports [from] have increased. The fact that EU exports in previous years were, say, 15-20 percent, and then became, let's say, 8 percent, is not because EU exports have decreased. The reason is that there has been re-export in other directions—for example, gold, diamonds, platinum, or TVs and smartphone watches—which did not exist before. We [i.e. Armenia], for example, have banned the re-export of smartphone watches because our European partners asked us to do so,” Papoyan added.

“One of the best indicators of economic development [in Armenia] is the number of registered jobs. In recent years, they have been saying all the time, ‘Well, unregistered workers are coming, they are being registered.’ But there is a limit to that. It could be 10,000, 20,000, 100,000, but all of that has a limit. The largest indicator of the limit is the following: Wages [in Armenia] have increased by 6 percent, jobs by 6 percent, the economy by 6 percent. Well, if there were a severe disproportion—for example, jobs grew by 26 percent, but the economy grew by 6 percent, and wages grew by 6 percent—I would have said that hidden jobs are coming and being registered. If that proportion is maintained, it means that we have already come to the point that the unregistered still exists, but its potential is already very small. Among the newly registered jobs [in Armenia], in fact, there are those jobs that are truly newly created," the Armenian minister of economy emphasized.