There are judgments in that direction, and different developments are possible. This was stated by Minister of Finance Vahe Hovhannisyan during a press conference Monday—and addressing the question of what impact the current Iran-Israel conflict could have on Armenia’s economy.

“In our budget documents, we consider a risk scenario also. We present different scenarios in that document itself, we assess the impact of that risk scenario also, and set indicators, too. For example, if I am not mistaken, in the case of one of the risk scenarios, [annual] economic growth [of Armenia] could be 1.3 percent instead of 5.1 percent.

As for the [current] escalation [of tension] between Iran and Israel, there are still phenomena that can negatively affect us, there are phenomena that can positively affect us. Much depends on the degree of this escalation and its duration,” the Armenian minister of finance said.

He recalled that when the Russian-Ukrainian war began in 2022, Armenia, based on the experience of 2014, immediately began to look at worst-case scenarios.

“But in real life, we [i.e. Armenia] had more positive developments as its result. Now, too, we are not in a hurry to draw conclusions. Our tasks remain the same. Of course, I am sure that our colleagues at the Ministry of Economy are dealing with issues related to our logistical deliveries—which take place through Iran—how they can be organized in this environment, which I cannot answer right now, since I am not directly involved in this work,” noted the Armenian minister of finance.

According to him, the current Iran-Israel conflict may affect Armenia’s deliveries, since part of the logistics of the country’s economy is also linked to deliveries from Iran.

“They may be disrupted, prolonged, become more expensive, etc. If the situation worsens to the point that international investors begin to consider Armenia also a risky environment for making investments, this may already affect the interest rate. We need to follow the developments and figure out in the process what we need to do if we can do some things that will mitigate these effects," emphasized the minister of finance of Armenia.