ARMENIA NEEDS TO DEVELOP BUSINESS-NETWORKS WITH ITS DIASPORA: ROB KITCHIN

ARKA
Nov 16, 2009

YEREVAN, November 16, /ARKA/. Armenia needs to develop
business-networks with its Diaspora in the areas of financial services,
technologies, health and tourism, Rob Kitchin, a professor of Dublin
National University, said in Yerevan last Saturday during a meeting
of the Board of Trustees of Armenian National Competitiveness Fund.

According to him, creation and development of new business networks
will allow to use more efficiently the entire potential of the Armenian
Diaspora, including its financial, economic and business opportunities.

He said his country has 60 such networks with 30,000 members across
the world who are specialized in working with different governments
and different economy and science sectors.

He said before to create such a network Armenia should go through
several stages, particularly, to study and work out pilots programs
to find out the potential and the opportunities of the Diaspora,
to determine institutional directions and the best international
experience.

He suggested that Armenia should keep away from creating ambitious
models, and use instead the experience of Scotland and New Zealand.

In his opinion, it is necessary in the first place to create a list
of limited sectors and begin with several directions based either on
geography or industry type, to build an elite sector that would serve
as a locomotive to implement other projects and form venture funds.

Andre Andonian, director-partner of McKinsey&Company (Germany), who
is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Armenian National
Competitiveness Fund, said the Armenian Diaspora runs already a great
deal of different networks operating in all big countries and cities
of the world. The question, he said, is how to create a unified model
that would meet our interests.

But according to Avetik Chubarian, director-partner of McKinsey&Company
for Russia, there is no ideal model to work with Diaspora. He said
Armenians need only to feel that they are a 10 million nation,
a successful, integral nation with their own sovereign country.

The meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Armenian National
Competitiveness Fund was held in Yerevan on November 14-15.