Author: Mary Lazarian

 17:08,

YEREVAN, MARCH 31, ARMENPRESS. Former Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan will soon be appointed Vice Mayor of Yerevan, moreover he will run for Mayor of Yerevan in the 2023 elections.

The Civil Contract party’s PR coordinator and Member of Parliament Vahagn Alexanyan told ARMENPRESS that Avinyan will head the Civil Contract list in the 2023 local self-government election of Yerevan.

“Indeed, the party’s board has made such decision, but it is very important to differentiate that right now Hrachya Sargsyan is the Mayor of Yerevan and the Civil Contract Party team is fully supporting Hrachya Sargsyan in this position,” Alexanyan said.

Alexanyan added that Avinyan will soon be appointed Vice Mayor of Yerevan.

 15:07,

YEREVAN, MARCH 26, ARMENPRESS. The Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Armenian Parliament Eduard Aghajanyan sent a letter to OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Margareta Cederfelt and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Special Representative on South Caucasus Kari Henriksen over the latest Azerbaijani military actions against Artsakh and the humanitarian crisis which resulted after it cut off gas supply to Artsakh.

Aghajanyan noted in the letter that despite Azerbaijan claiming in the international arena that it wants to establish peace in South Caucasus, in reality Azerbaijan continues the psychological, humanitarian and military terror against the people of Nagorno Karabakh, with an aim to achieve a complete exodus of Armenians from Artsakh.

“I underscored the importance of the international community’s swift reaction to the situation and immediate suppression of Azerbaijan, and I reiterated Armenia’s readiness to re-launch the process of peaceful, negotiated and final resolution within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship,” Aghajanyan said in a statement on social media.

On March 24-25 the Azerbaijani troops attacked Artsakh military positions and invaded the Parukh village.

Azeri drone strikes killed 3 Artsakh troops and wounded 15 others.

 17:17,

YEREVAN, MARCH 26, ARMENPRESS. The Foreign Ministry of Artsakh said in a that the unequivocal position of the world community in response to Azerbaijan’s attempts to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Artsakh and ignite a new war will be an important collective contribution to the stabilization of the situation.

“We welcome the reaction of the international community, both at the level of foreign ministries and individual political and public figures condemning Azerbaijan’s provocative steps to escalate tensions and terrorize the population of Artsakh.

We are convinced that the unequivocal position of the world community in response to Azerbaijan’s attempts to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Artsakh and ignite a new war will be an important collective contribution to the stabilization of the situation.

We are confident that Russia’s peacekeeping efforts, the clear-cut and adequate stance of the international community supported by political measures will deprive Azerbaijan of the opportunity to qualify systematic gross violations of the rights of residents of Artsakh as an internal matter,” the Artsakh foreign ministry said in a .

 14:04,

YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Cultural Days will be held in Monte Carlo on March 25-27 within the framework of an international art festival.

There will be a premiere of ballet. The authors of the music are composers Michelle Petrosyan and Aram Hovhannisyan.

New works will be performed, the Sergey Parajanov Museum, the Gurdjieff Ensemble, pianist Vardan Mamikonyan, soprano Karine Babajanyan and others will perform during the event.

During a press conference in Armenpress today, composer Michelle Petrosyan said this festival is one of the most important cultural events in Monaco. The director of the festival included something new in the festival this year, focusing also on the Armenian culture.

“It can be said there is going to be an Armenian weekend. The Armenian painting art and music will be presented. This festival has never paid such a focus on the Armenian culture. This year’s approach speaks about an important step and a special attitude”, the composer said.

“The creative process was quite hard as we were dealing with a branch close to the art. Music itself can talk about many things, but when it deals with ballet, other approaches are needed. Therefore, that work was quite a serious experience for us”, composer Aram Hovhannisyan said.

The ballet will also be presented in Armenia this year in November.

Gurdjieff Ensemble artistic director Levon Eskenyan in turn said that they will focus on Komitas during the upcoming festival.

The Sergey Parajanov Museum will be presented at the festival through the Color of Pomegranates movie. There will also be a photo exhibition of Parajanov’s works.

The international art festival in Monte Carlo kicked off on March 11 and will last until April 3.

 16:15,

YEREVAN, MARCH 15, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia has revised its forecast for the economic growth of the country for 2022.

The Bank now forecasts 1.6% economic growth for the year, President of the CBA Martin Galstyan said at a press conference today.

“The economic growth forecasts have been lowered from the previous 5.3% up to 1.6%”, he said.

The Central Bank says the impact of current sanctions against Russia on Armenia’s economy will be reflected by significant slowdown of the economic growth rates.

The decline in forecast is mainly conditioned by certain drop in the field of industry. “We were forecasting that the industry branch must have grown by 1.6 in 2022, however, under these new developments when we see that there are some problems in mining industry, processing industry, the industry branch is set at -4.7%”, he said.

There is also a certain decline in construction field, and accordingly the Central Bank is forecasting 7% growth for this branch compared to the previous 16.8% forecast. The forecast for the growth in services has also been lowered from 5.9% to 3.2%. The only sector that will have some positive development based on the previous forecasts is agriculture.

While forecasting the growth in the GDP, the Central Bank took the fiscal policy that was supposed to be before the shock. Change in the fiscal policy is not reflected yet in this forecast of the GDP.

The EU supports normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey. Toivo Klaar

 17:32,

YEREVAN, 12 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. The European Union fully supports the process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey, ARMENPRESS reports EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Toivo Klaar wrote on his Twitter page.

Referring to the March 12 meeting between Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, he wrote, “The meeting of Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Ararat Mirzoyan within the framework of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum is promising. The European Union fully supports the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia”.

On March 12, Armenian FM Ararat Mirzoyan met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu within the framework of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum. The Foreign Ministers reaffirmed their readiness to carry out the process of full normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey and the establishment of good-neighborly relations without preconditions. They agreed that the normalisation is necessary for the whole region.