Armenia loses economy, people
The Armenians have turned into a nation of "traders and farmers" over the past 25 years of independence of Armenia, News.am reported citing Director of the Center for Sociological Studies Sociometer Aharon Adibekyan as saying.
The Armenians have turned into a nation of "traders and farmers" over the past 25 years of independence of Armenia, News.am reported citing Director of the Center for Sociological Studies Sociometer Aharon Adibekyan as saying.
“After the collapse of the USSR in Armenia, thousands of factories, 250 design bureaus and 900 farms stopped operating. We got a 1.5-million ‘army’ of unemployed, most of whom were professional employees,” Adibekyan told reporters on September 20.
The sociologist noted that the main problem was the fact that Armenia was deeply integrated into the Soviet economy; therefore, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the crash. He believes that it has no sense to restore these businesses in Armenia, as there are their equivalents in Russia and Ukraine, and Armenian products will be uncompetitive in international markets.
Today, 65 percent out of 2,741 companies operating in Armenia are reprocessing (mainly food), 20-25 percent service energy and gas sector, only 15 percent are industrial companies, mainly mining. And only about half of the 400,000 farmers receiving land cultivate it, Adibekyan said.
Since the country has gained independence, Armenia has lost 2.5 million of human potential, the sociologist noted. "In 25 years, our population was meant to grow up to 5 million, but today the real population makes up about half of it."
He also recalled that according to UN forecast, the population of Armenia can reduce to 1.7 million people at the end of the century.
The reduction in the total population leads to a decline in domestic consumption, which makes Armenia unattractive for foreign manufacturers.
On January 1, 2016, the resident population of Armenia made up less than 3 million people, making a decrease of 12,000 people compared to the previous year. Another noteworthy fact is that since the proclamation of independence in 1991, the Armenian population has decreased by 634,700 people.
In the meantime, the volume of unemployment in the first quarter of 2016 made 19.3 percent of able-towork population in the country, and due to the wrong structure of national economy, new vacancies do not seem to come up soon.