Armenia has huge problems in construction sand mining, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated in his remarks at the Mining Armenia Forum 2025 on Friday.

According to him, this is one of the domains where transparency is a serious problem, and the Armenian government finds it difficult to resolve it, partly because when the Cabinet expresses its willingness to take decisive steps, it quickly feels pressure from the construction sector.

“It turns out that if everything is brought up to standard, construction in Armenia will stop for a long time,” Pashinyan added.

He said that construction sand mining is a huge shadow economy.

“We have not found ways to resolve this; and this is a serious challenge. Here we are faced with issues of national security and territorial integrity, when it becomes clear that [construction] sand extraction from the Araks River is reducing the territory of our country—and we do not have effective countermeasures,” noted the PM.

“In general, I believe that one of the biggest problems in the sector is the image. For both objective and subjective reasons, many problems have accumulated here. There are many negative opinions about the mining sector. The problem here is that in the Armenian public consciousness, the perception that the subsoil belongs to the people and the state does not seem to be very accurate, and it is time for us to address this matter, and we are working on it. Currently, the government and people of Armenia have shares in the Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine and the Amulsar [gold] mine—and this is very important,” added Nikol Pashinyan.