JULY 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Fresh figures showed that Armenia’s economy is expanding steadily, media reported. Armenia’s economic activity index increased by 4.4% in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2012. Using the same comparison, industrial output was 8.4% high in the first six months of 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — German football club Borussia Dortmund paid Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk 24m euro for Armenian footballer Henrikh Mkhitaryan, one of the highest fees paid for a footballer from the former Soviet Union. The 24-year-old has played for the Armenian national team 39 times and scored 11 goals.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JULY 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia will upgrade its military base in Armenia and help modernise the Armenian army, local media reported. The move was probably designed to balance out increased Russian arms exports to Azerbaijan, Armenia’s main enemy. Armenia and Azerbaijan are officially at war over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)
JUNE 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s national security service arrested three people and accused them of spying for Azerbaijan, media reported. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that two of the people arrested were Armenian army officers, will raise tension between the two arch-enemies.
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(News report from Issue No. 141, published on July 1 2013)
JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s Gazprom has said it wants to buy a 20% stake in Armenia’s ArmRosGazprom that it doesn’t yet own. Armenia’s government currently owns the outstanding 20% stake in ArmRosGazprom. ArmRosGazprom is Armenia’s monopoly gas distributor and the move would give Russia control over Armenian energy consumption.
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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
YEREVAN/Armenia, JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Carrefour, the French supermarket brand famed for its aggressive discount model, was supposed to open its first branch in Armenia last December. It didn’t hit this target although it has established an office in Yerevan.
Rumours on just why Carrefour’s launch has been delayed, drift around the Armenian capital. Most of these suggest that local, well-connected businessmen who control the supermarkets in Armenia don’t want the competition and have called in a few favours to delay the opening.
Regardless, the delay is frustrating people.
“Carrefour is no angel,” Anna Kachatryan, a 40-year-old housewife, said. “But I think that we need this sort of company to establish themselves in Armenia.”
She wanted food prices to drop and thought that Carrefour would help do this.
Armen Safarya, 54, though, said that he worried that Carrefour would become the dominant supermarket in Armenia and would end up harming local producers by pushing down their fees.
“This is not the solution,” he said. “Carrefour will control the entire market and will make local producers suffer.”
Carrefour itself has not explained the delay in opening its first store in Yerevan, although it has insisted that one would open by the end of 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
MAY 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Consumer markets in Central Asia and the South Caucasus region are maturing, as Tesco, the British supermarket chain, has realised.
Or at least, consumer markets in some of the region’s countries are maturing.
Tesco’s clothing department, which trades under the brand name F&F, announced that it planned to open various franchise stores across the Middle East, Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Specifically it said that F&F would open a store in Astana, the Kazakh capital by the end of June, to be followed by stores in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.
These will be opened through franchise agreements with Saudi Arabia-based Al Hokair and Dubai-based Futtaim.
The deal and Tesco’s intention to expand across Central Asia and the South Caucasus is important as it acts as further evidence that consumer demand in these markets is changing.
Long associated with the luxury market, Western high street brands have moved into Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, over the past couple of years and now, with the arrival of Tesco, it appears that discount brands are following.
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(News report from Issue No. 136, published on May 27 2013)
YEREVAN/Armenia, APRIL 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The result of Armenia’s presidential election on Feb. 18 was disputed, just like it was five years ago. And, just like in 2008, the opposition staged regular demonstrations.
This year, though, the urbane Raffi Hovhannisyan, leader of the Heritage Party, led the demonstrations against President Serzh Sarksyan. In 2008, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the firebrand former president led demonstrations.
The two men took a very different approach. Instead of whiping up the crowd in increasingly antagonistic speeches, as Ter-Petrosyan did, a tactic that eventually lead to clashes that killed 10 people, Hovhannisyan has taken a calmer approach.
And has impressed people on the streets of Armenia’s capital.
“What the opposition leader does today is a new style for Armenia, maybe it’s a more Western style campaign,” said Laura Gevorgyan, a young activist who has followed most of the protests.
Hovhannisyan has dubbed his approach a Barevolution after the Armenian word for hello — barev. Despite Hovhannisyan’s efforts, Sarksyan took the presidential oath for his second five-year term on April 9. This disappointed some of Hovhannisyan’s supporters. For many, though, avoiding violence meant that progress has been made.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Serzh Sargsyan was sworn in as president of Armenia for a second consecutive five year term. An estimated 12,000 supporters of Mr Sargsyan’s main rival, Raffi Hovannisyan, protested only a few kilometres from the inauguration ceremony. They say the presidential election of Feb. 18 was fixed.
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(News report from Issue No. 131, published on April 12 2013)
APRIL 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A monitor from the Feb. 18 presidential election in Armenia said she is being blackmailed for alleging vote fraud against supporters of president Serzh Sarksyan, media reported. Narine Esmaeli said she received phone calls telling her to drop the allegations or intimate photos of her would be released.
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(News report from Issue No. 130, published on April 5 2013)
