YEREVAN. – Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Minister of Economy Tigran Khachatryan of Armenia on Saturday are meeting with exporters and businessmen.

“The export trend of Armenia’s economy, that Armenia’s export branches develop, that it be one of the important indicators of our economy, is a program for the government of Armenia; also, one of our program provisions is to assist the processing industry,” Pashinyan noted, in particular, in his opening remarks at the meeting. “When implementing any assistance program, you need to be convinced that this assistance contributes so that the domain develops further, becomes more competitive. We need to be convinced that we are providing a kind of assistance that leads to a chain reaction and which also becomes assistance for other domains.”

In the PM’s words, with such meetings, the Armenian government wants to properly understand the signals coming from businessmen, and to properly manage and respond to these signals.

“We have a strong interest in the construction industry, so that we put the right formulas of assistance because we are dealing with a situation in the real estate market [of Armenia] when demand is growing, [but] supply is not growing,” Pashinyan added. “In those conditions, there is a very substantial increase in prices, and here it’s important that we—with  our cooperation—be able to balance the market in such a way as to have the right balance of supply and demand.”

The premier also stressed that the government’s vision is that the processing industry develops in Armenia and becomes a key pillar of the country’s economy.

According to the PM, the Minister of Economy has met with the businessmen and collected their recommendations that came from the export industry.

“We have collected a lot of information,” Nikol Pashinyan added, “and in the near future, we must work on the difficult task of turning that information into relevant decisions.”