Ambassador of Armenia to Switzerland H.E. Mr. Andranik Hovhannisyan participated at the webinar "Update Armenia II. Armenia as an IT and R&D Nearshoring Destination"

08 February, 2022

Opening Remarks by H.E. Mr. Andranik Hovhannisyan,

Ambassador of Armenia to Switzerland at the “Update Armenia II: Armenia as an IT and R&D Nearshoring Destination” webinar

February 8, 2022

Excellences,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the outset I would like to greet all the participants of the webinar and extend my appreciation to the organizers and in particular to highlight the Enterprise Armenia and Joint Chamber of Commerce, who are going also to sign a Memorandum of Understanding today.

I would like to take this opportunity to wholeheartedly congratulate them on the signing of the MoU. It is a real benchmark, which will serve for further activating the contacts and boosting the business ties, promoting the investment climate and contributing to new ideas and hopefully to the implementation of new projects.

I am glad to see the continuous interest in this regard. Let me recall that the first segment of this webinar took place back in April 2021. H.E. Vahan Kerobyan, Armenia’s Minister of Economy was a keynote speaker then and he presented the possibilities and advantages of doing business in Armenia. We certainly welcome these efforts and strongly encourage the follow up. Likewise, we stand ready to support and contribute.

Needless to say, that Switzerland is one of the world leaders in IT and innovation and this event provides an ample opportunity to get acquainted with its best practices, and in the meantime to introduce Armenian IT and R&D and its small and medium enterprises to Switzerland.

In this context, I would like to gladly highlight the participation of "Polixis" and "Azad Pharma" companies in this webinar. These two companies stand as vivid illustrations of fruitful cooperation and combination of Armenian and Swiss creativity, skills, diligence and performance. Their success story also demonstrates that there is a great deal of untapped potential here, the realization of which requires mutual and continued efforts.

The best practices of Switzerland in the field of innovation, and its policies to protect and encourage small and medium enterprises could be very useful and effective for Armenia. SMEs are the backbone of the Swiss economy. Suffice to mention, that two thirds of the jobs in Switzerland are generated by SMEs, making a significant contribution to national welfare and economic growth.

I am convinced that the promotion of IT, R&D and innovation and the policy of protection and development of SMEs in Armenia are the ways of strategic development that will allow us to strengthen our resilience and flexibility in the face of repeated challenges in the changing global world markets.

I believe that the signing of MoU and the deliberations of this webinar could serve as another step in this direction. I wish you fruitful discussions and I am looking forward to the outcome and the follow up.

Thank you.

MFA RA
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