YEREVAN. – Our government needs to change its attitude towards sports; sports are of strategic importance to us. Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this at today's Government session.

"In the draft of Armenia’s development strategy until 2050, I have proposed to put a point that Armenia should have at least 25 Olympic medals, win the title of world individual chess champion, and the national football team should become prizewinner in the world or European cups by the year 2050,” he said. "This is not only a political, sociopsychological, but also an economic issue."

"The government has to view sports in the context of the overall strategy and development policy of the country," Pashinyan stressed.

He also suggested developing a methodology to calculate how much, for example, being an Olympic champion increases the flow of tourists to Armenia. "There is no country whose economy is not developing dynamically, but it has tangible success in the field of sports," the PM stressed. "The development of sports is the best litmus test that the economy in the country is developing."