By Vestnik Kavkaza
The results of a poll regarding Armenia's accession to the Customs Union, which was attended by 1,900 people, showed that 67% of respondents support the country's entry into the CU, and only 5% are opposed to it in principle.
This was said by the director of the Center for Integrative Studies of the Eurasian Development Bank, economist Yevgeny Vinokurov during Yerevan-Moscow video conference "Eurasian Union for Armenia: economic benefits and social dialogue". "More than 40% of all investments in the Armenian economy to date are provided by Russia", Vinokourov said, adding that if it would be a long-term cooperation in the framework of the CU, the amount of investment, of course, will increase significantly.
Meanwhile, according to Aza Migranyan, the head of the laboratory of Inter-regional Development Problems under the Institute of Market Problems of the RAS, it is necessary to talk about the benefits and disadvantages that cooperation with the EU and the Eurasian community can bring. “When we speak about Armenia, we can see a paradoxical situation, in which Armenia is interested not in the classic form of a Customs Union, but an economic union. Armenia is interested not in freedom of promotion of its products, because it is isolated, I mean the short-term period, but it is interested in common markets of industrial production, as we need modernization and economic development. You know that nothing will happen without modernization”, she said.
She is very interested in the common labor market of the Eurasian community: “According to statistics, more than 50% of the GDP structure of Armenia is in the sphere of trade and services. In this context, the growth of GDP and a growth tendency depend on the internal purchasing ability of the population. And here we have a causative-consecutive chain of economic factors of cooperation. On the one hand, Armenia is interested in liberalization and improvement of accessibility of the Russian, Kazakh and Belarusian labor markets. Possible joining the CU and cooperation within the Union will enable Armenia to gain wider access to the labor markets of its partners, and this is an obvious advantage”.
According to Migranyan, “the calculations which would be made, considering the purchasing ability of the population by means of transfers, are rather complicated - we have them, but I don’t want to make you feel bored; and it will bring serious growth as well. But the Armenian problem is that short-term growth will be provided at the expense of an increase in the population's income, while the problem is modernizing the economy and keeping professionals in the country. The problem of simplification of emigration leads to the problem of the depopulation of Armenia. From this point of view, preservation of the human resources potential is very important for Armenia”.
Migranyan told about the surveys for the presidential administration developing strategic factors of possible cooperation with the following conclusion: “If Armenia really becomes a member of the CU, it should, first of all, strive for development and settlement, i.e. signing various contracts and unification of laws in the sphere of labor resources management, in the sphere of management of investments in industry and modernization. And there is a combination which is desirable both for Eurasia and Europe – uniting the territory from Dublin to Vladivostok”.
A combination of the investment capacities of the CU, the common economic area and the future Eurasian Economic Union, the technological capacities of European developed industrial infrastructure and the professionalism of population can lead to a serious positive shift, according to Migranyan.
