ARMENIAN BUSINESSMEN ARE BEING PREPARED FOR FREE TRADE WITH EC

ARKA
Nov 13, 2009

YEREVAN, November 13. /ARKA/. Seminar for Armenian businessmen on
the changes of trade regime between Armenia and European Union within
the program "East Partnership" took place on Friday in Yerevan.

The seminar "Proposed trade frames with EU" was organized jointly
with Armenian-European consulting center of economic policy and right
(AEPLAC), Ministry of Economy of Armenia and group of EU consultants.

Businessmen, members of the Union of Manufacturers and Entrepreneurs,
Association of Businessmen and Union of Exporters participated in the
seminar. "The subject of the seminar was current and future trade
regime with European Union. Future trade relations between Armenia
and EU is a deep and global free trade regime", said Aleksey Sekaryov,
Head of AEPLAC to the journalists.

He said that this process will take five years and the goal of this
event is to prepare Armenian businessmen for it. "We should know what
is trade regime, get introduced to technical norms and standards of
EU for exporting our products", said Sekaryov.

This preparation is organized beforehand because Armenian businessmen
have rather narrow horizon of planning, they have to learn about
higher level of trade regime and cooperate with EU.

They have to learn about it now for including it into new cycle of
planning. It is necessary to increase quality of control and implement
reforms in the sphere of protection of intellectual ownership,
standardization, sanitary and fito-sanitary control in Armenia.

Mushegh Tumasyan, Deputy Minister of Armenia mentioned that the goal
of the Government of Armenia is to increase export of Armenian products
to EU countries. "Our goal is to promote export to EU countries.

It is rather difficult process which is conditioned by the quality
of the product and certain entrepreneurial skills", said Tumasyan.

"Europe greatly supports Armenia and it is important that civil society
organizations and the society know that there is progress and the
life is improving", said Uffe Holst Yensen, Head of Department of
European Support delegation of EU in Armenia.

EU market is the largest in the world and the program "East
partnership" initiated by EU gives opportunity to participant-countries
to enter European market. "East partnership" is Polish-Sweden
initiative in the frames of neighborhood policy targeted at the
improvement of relations of EU with post-soviet countries. The program
should involve neighbor-countries of EU – Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia,
Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus.