Category: News

Armenian Central Bank cuts key refinancing rate to 6.75%

Hovik Karapetian

The Armenian Central Bank said on Tuesday it had decided to cut its refinancing rate to 6.75 percent from 7.25 percent.

Annual deflation in the South Caucasus country was at 1.9 percent in August, compared to 1.3 percent deflation in July, according to central bank data. Monthly deflation in August was 0.5 percent, compared to 2.3 percent deflation in July.

The government forecasts annual inflation in a 2.5-5.5 percent range in 2016, the same as last year’s target.

Yerevan to host Welcome to Armenia forum to mark World Tourism Day

Garo Vardanian

 

 

 

Yerevan will host Welcome to Armenia forum to mark World Tourism Day observed on September 27.

The forum to be held on September 28 will consist of two parts, program coordinator Vruyr Penesyan told reporters today. In the first half state agencies will present their views on the development of different directions of tourism, namely sports, health, cultural and eco-tourism.

In the second half the Mayors of resort towns will present the capacities of their cities.

“Armenia is especially popular for religious tourism and pilgrimage,” Mekhak Apresyan, Head of the Tourism Department of the Ministry of Economy, told Public Radio of Armenia.

The World Tourism Day is celebrated on September 27 every year. The idea of World Tourism Day was born in the 3rd session of the UNWTO General Assembly in 1979 and it has been celebrated since 1980. In 1997 the UNWTO General Assembly decided to choose a host country every year from various regions, which would collaborate with the organization in celebrating the World Tourism Day

Barbecue: A film shot in Armenia and 11 other countries

Emil Lazarian

A chance encounter in Texas led two Adelaide filmmakers into an adventure of a lifetime as they catalogued the one thing that links almost every culture in the world: barbecue, according to the

“The day we turned up in the Philippines, the airline had lost all our cameras,” says Matthew Salleh, one half of Urtext Films along with Rose Tucker. “So, for a week, the cameras were lost until we found them in a shed full of live chickens and fruit at the airport. You have to be pretty versatile when you’re flying around filming like that.”

Salleh is talking about just one of the dozen stops made on their epic documentary feature, Barbecue. Visiting 12 countries over nine months, Tucker and Salleh delved deep into the world’s myriad barbecue cultures to produce their diverse, humorous and inspiring documentary about the bonds forged between people over meat and fire.

“Everyone thinks that their barbecue is the best,” Tucker says. “Everywhere you go, their barbecue is the best. There’s no arguing.”

Tucker and Salleh are bursting with stories from their carnivorous odyssey. One quirky tale comes from one of the first countries selected to visit, and perhaps most surprising from the Australian perspective: Armenia.

“We were picking what countries we were going to go to, and we saw this video of this old man talking about Armenian barbecue, saying things like ‘Armenian barbecue is best barbecue’,” Salleh says. “His daughter had posted it online and gotten five million views or whatever. We thought it was hilarious. We just messaged them, his daughter lived in Melbourne. We skyped him and he arranged a room for us in Armenia.

Counting on her fingers, Tucker tells The Adelaide Review the places they visited. “We did, in order, Sweden, The Philippines, Mongolia, then South Africa, Armenia, a refugee camp on the border of Syria and Jordan, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and then finished it off this year with Uruguay, Mexico and went back to Texas.”