Armenia To Move Central Back Out Of Capital
HULIQ.com
Submitted by Armen Hareyan on Sat, 2010-04-10 22:29
Armenia Friday made another bold step toward its goal of becoming a
regional financial center. The country said in 2013 it will move a
considerable amount of operations of its Central Back (equivalent of
U.S. Federal Reserve) to a northern resort town Dilijan aiming to make
this beautiful small town as the financial capital of the region.
Yesterday the president of Armenia toured Dilijan and stopped at the
construction site of the complex where the future Central Bank will be
located. The construction is in process and the head of the Armenian
Central bank said that they will be able to move some operations to
work from Dilijan already starting in 2013.
Right now the plan is that 250-300 people with their families will
move to Dilijan too. The government is building a special residential
complex to house the employees of the Armenian Central bank in
Dilijan.
Armenia encourages it’s local and international banks to come to
Dilijan as part of a project to make the city as a regional financial
center. As the country’s economy grew 3.1 percent in the first
quarter, Armenian government hopes to capitalize on that growth and
focus partly on Dilijan, thus trying to ensure the entire economy is
not focused in and around the capital Yerevan.
In the meantime the Armenian banks did pretty well during the latest
recession as they were more conservative in lending. Consolidation is
now seen in the top Armenian banks as well. Just this week one of
Armenia’s top banks Americabank bought Cascade Bank and intends to
grow internationally capitalizing on the existence of a large and
powerful Armenian diaspora around the world.
The country has said devloping its financial sector and the IT
industry as one of the priorities of the economy. As Armenia is not
rich with oil and natural gas it focuses on industries that are more
resource effective and do not depend on natural resources.
Written by Armen Hareyan