AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
While ArmeniaNow is on its New Year holiday break, we present the latest edition of AGBU magazine, prepared in part by ArmeniaNow staff. To read other AGBU news, visit www.agbu.org.Regular editions of ArmeniaNow will resume January 11.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
If, as in other societies, real estate prices are an indicator, Armenia has entered a Golden Age in home buying. Or in home selling, rather, as the years of double-digit Gross Domestic Product have paralleled a dramatic rise in the cost of home-buying. Over the past decade, real estate prices – starting from a low-point of the post-soviet collapse –have risen up to 10 times, reaching amounts comparable to some European countries.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
By Haroutiun Khachatrian
Competition is the basis of the free market economy, which is why state regulations exist for the protection of fair business practice. In countries such as Armenia, still finding their way in their evolving commercial structure, the need to ensure fair competition is especially critical. In Armenia’s case, a country of only three million and about 30 percent poor, there is little to fight over, further underscoring the absolute necessity for an even playing field for all. Most major trade in Armenia is controlled by relatively few tycoons – better described in Armenia as oligarchs. With the dismantling of the Soviet Union, previously non-existent opportunities for personal wealth opened like vaults at a bank for those in place to walk in and take the goods. Opportunists wasted no time in easing, or in some cases muscling, their way into positions of proprietorship that re-funneled the flow of cash from state coffers to their own.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
Evidence of a city alive is seen at sunrise, far earlier than a recent past when only street dogs and street sweepers of Armenia seemed aware that the clock holds a 7 for morning as well one on the p.m. side. Signs of life changing are as simple as the changed signs on sidewalks, where cafes and restaurants invite residents and visitors to breakfast. Until very recently only hotels and one restaurant, Artbridge, opened for breakfast. Now, others have followed the trend common in the UK and North America – opening their doors as early as 8 a.m. Tiny-cupped Armenian coffee now shares the menu with the brewed variety. Iced tea is available in flavors that include pomegranate, and while service still remains stuck somewhere in transition, it now comes with a 10 percent charge to the bill.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
Remember those early 1990s-era photos of empty shop shelves and depressed faces waiting in bread lines? That was then. Ever thought you’d be able to buy toothpaste for your dog in a food market in Armenia? This is now.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
In contrast to societies in which companies spend millions on public-relation ploys to attract media attention, business practice in Armenia remains an insular, guarded realm in which corporate heads discourage attention rather than solicit it. Efforts to profile businesses for this series of articles was a reminder that even successful businessmen would rather turn off the spotlight than be found in it. Reluctance to discuss finances or taxes or inside trade secrets is surely not peculiar to Armenia. Here, though, presumably harmless questions from a reporter are met with resistance, suspicion and often rudeness. Consistent with the situation in politics or virtually any other area, trust between media and the business world is a phenomenon still waiting to happen in Armenia.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
By Haroutiun Khachatrian
For six consecutive years, Armenia has enjoyed double-digit economic growth. Turning the corner in 2001, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has stayed above 10 percent growth, even reaching 14 percent in 2003 and 2005. In 2005, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced that Armenia had regained the GDP rate (meaning the new value created in a given country) it held before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The announcement was met with skepticism by those who wondered how such growth could possibly occur, considering closed factories and closed borders and a railway export system that had rusted from lack of service.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
When the Armenian currency, the dram, first began to show signs of appreciation in late 2003, few could have predicted the dramatic impact that exchange rates would continue to have on the daily business of buying and selling in the country. The dollar traded as high as 585 in 2003. By mid-October of this year it had hit 328 – a drop of more than 40 percent and by late October it hit 320, dropping 10 drams (3.3 percent) in one three-day period. Central Bank of Armenia says that the dram’s rise has not peaked.
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
Analysis by Richard Giragosian
Visitors to the Armenian capital Yerevan come away impressed with the city’s outward signs of economic growth and activity. Further from the surface of facades and evidence of consumption, however, there is a deeply held belief that the display of economic growth and the phenomenal construction boom in Yerevan is built on corruption. In addition to this pervasive perception, there is also a widespread view that much of this development is tied to money laundering. While the issue of Armenian corruption has garnered a significant degree of scrutiny and study, to what extent is the perception of money laundering in Armenia actually grounded in fact?
AGBUmag | 04.01.08 | 16:00
A glance across Yerevan’s panorama shows a city in the throes of construction, with cranes and dust and noise, and expectation mixed with apprehension. Barely a street in the center of the capital is unmarked by blue tarpaulin stretched over unfinished projects, or great craters chiseled into the ground for still more building work to begin. Apartment buildings, hotels, offices and retail shops are constructed, renovated, enlarged or redesigned. The face of the city changes with each multi-storied tower – many rising to replace or obscure the skyline imagined by city architect Alexander Tamanian a century ago.
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