AGREEMENTS OF OVER ONE MILLION DOLLARS SIGNED ANNUALLY WITH MEDIATION OF ARMENIAN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SECTOR’S CANADIAN AND EUROPEAN REPRESENTATIVE OFFICES

Noyan Tapan
Aug 23, 2007

YEREVAN, AUGUST 23, NOYAN TAPAN. The Canadian (Toronto-based) and
European (Vienna-based) Representative Offices of the Armenian IT
sector ensure the signing of agreements of a total of over a million
dollars a year between Armenian IT companies and those in regions of
their location, the director of the Enterprise Incubator Foundation
(EIF) Bagrat Yengibarian said during a talk with NT correspondent.

In his words, each representative office acted as a mediator in the
sale of 3-5 Armenian enterprises’ high-value production, as well as
in the signing of agreements on fulfilment of software orders a year
on average.

B. Yengibarian reminded that the Canadian representative office has
been operating for about two years, while the European office – for
nearly a year. According to him, these representative offices will
take at least another two years to fully cover their expenditures at
the expense of intermediary payments received from sale of Armenian IT
enterprises’ production. The annual sum paid to each of these offices
currently makes 50 thousand dollars. "The work of these representative
offices is not self-financed so that the heavy burden of large
intermediary payments will be taken off the local comapnies. Today
the matter concerns 3-5%, whereas in international IT practice,
the mediator receives 25-30% from each sale," B. Yengibarian noted.

He said that the issue of extending the network of Armenian IT
sector’s representative offices will be solved after the approval
of the Armenian government’s strategy on development of the IT
sector. B. Yengibarian attached special importance to foundation of
such offices in Silicon Valley (California) and Southeast Asia.