A consultation on the prospects of the economic development of Armenia was held in Ijevan under the leadership of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and President of the Republic Vahagn Khachaturyan.

The consultation was attended by members of the executive, legislative and heads of local self-government bodies.

At the beginning of the consultation, the Prime Minister noted that today they will discuss strategic issues related to the economic development of Armenia, which relate to the priority directions of the economic development, and of course, the agenda of reforms that should maximally contribute to the further economic development of our country. "I have had the opportunity to say that when we talk about the state interest of the Republic of Armenia, we should focus on the interest of the economic development of the Republic of Armenia, because in my opinion, I have thought a lot about this topic to specify what the state interest is. And in my opinion, it is precisely economic development, because I do not find a more specific and accurate correspondence and I do not think that it exists.

This, by the way, is also very important for our perception of foreign policy and geopolitics," said Nikol Pashinyan. According to the Prime Minister, it should be noted that all global politics, geopolitics are built under the logic of the economy, economic development interests, and supply chains.

"When you try to understand geopolitics more and more deeply, you understand that it is based on the economy, and the economy is based on the need for the well-being of every citizen, because states are based on the well-being of their citizens. Absolutely everything that states do serves the well-being of their citizens. Otherwise, the state has no meaning. And all other policies are built on the need for well-being.

When we say security, we don't go too deep into that sense either, the security of what? The security of well-being, because all the components that are necessary for well-being - security stems from the security of those components. It means nothing else," said Nikol Pashinyan.

The Prime Minister emphasized those perceptions, because we need to understand these processes from a genetic level so that we can properly adjust our actions in the future. “I must state that in recent months our economic team, led by the President of the Republic, has carried out quite extensive work on this topic, and today there will be a discussion of the results or conclusions of that work,” said Nikol Pashinyan.

During the consultation, issues related to involvement in global value chains, diversification of foreign trade, business support tools, capital market development, increasing the level of investments, capital expenditures, infrastructure development, and ensuring productive growth were discussed.

The meeting touched upon topics related to ensuring sustainable economic growth, ensuring inclusive economic growth, digitalization of state services, and the development of various sectors.

An exchange of ideas took place on the above-mentioned issues, and the participants of the meeting shared their opinions, observations, and suggestions. All members of the government, upon the Prime Minister’s instruction, outlined their priorities for the current year, which stem from the Government’s five-year Action Plan.

Summing up, Prime Minister Pashinyan noted that the ideological issue was raised in several speeches by those present and noted that when discussing the economy, the ideological issue is often omitted. Moreover, this happens for both objective and subjective reasons. “Communist ideology has its own economic model, the theory of Scandinavian socialism has its own model, there is the American model, and I think that we should also have our own model, based on political ideology.

And I want to return to the ideology and concept of the Real Armenia again. We have had occasion to discuss, and I raised this question mainly in discussions with the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, what is the cultural ideology of the Real Armenia. But we must ask this question to all spheres. What is the economic policy of the Real Armenia, what is the social policy, what is the foreign policy. The insecurity assessment system that we adopted the other day, I consider it the insecurity assessment policy of the ideology of the Real Armenia, the foreign policy that we are conducting is the ideology of the Real Armenia, in the sphere of education and science it is already visible what we need to do, in the sphere of defense the ideology of the Real Armenia is visible. We must go through all spheres and we must ask this question in all our policies,” said Nikol Pashinyan, adding that during that process the ideology of the Real Armenia must be developed and formulated as a more systematic political ideology.

"The next issue I would like to talk about was touched upon in the speeches. As much as I have looked at it with an unprofessional eye and gaze, discourses are of great and essential importance for the economy, and sometimes the modern economy is considered to be discourse-based. It’s a discourse economy lever when your economy is attacked with counter-discourse, therefore, as a Government, here too we must form a discourse of development. We, as a political body, must think about this, because the numbers and graphs are partly related to the mood we create in the country," the Prime Minister emphasized.

Referring to the priorities of the departments, Nikol Pashinyan noted: "First of all, digitalization should be one of the three main tasks for everyone. Therefore, for me, I consider the peace process to be a priority locomotive program, I also consider digitalization a priority for me, and the third is the fight against corruption."