Monday, November 18 2013

 The business community of Japan has a rather poor idea of Armenia in general and of the Armenian economy potential in particular, Armenian Ambassador to Japan Hrant Poghosyan said in his interview with ArmInfo. He said that the mutual relationship of Armenia and Japan is based on mutual respect, however, it is often associated with the age-old chicken and egg dilemma.    

In this light, the Ambassador stressed that the switch from technical aid to Armenia to implementation of specific investment projects has numerous difficulties, including the ones connected with creation of a legal base to protect the mutual investments, and other related problems. "The proposals to work out such a base to facilitate the process of further attraction of Japanese investments to Armenian economy come across misunderstanding due to both the lack of current business projects and the poor interest", said the Ambassador.    

Nevertheless, he thinks that the process of cooperation development is moving forward through cultural programs, technological forums, and publications about Armenia in the Japanese press. "For the moment, the foreign economic priorities of Japan are the small markets of Southeast Asia, as well as the global traditional markets. Therefore, the Japanese investments in the South Caucasus region are restricted to oil business only", said the Ambassador. He thinks that Japanese companies have a big job to do to switch from selling their goods, especially hi-tech products, to investing. "To be honest, it is a hard job, and we have not yet succeeded in this dimension", he said.

Poghosyan pointed out that over the past few years the Armenian Foreign Ministry has been working at the issue of opening a Japanese diplomatic mission, which might seriously promote the mutual relationship. He said that there are several formal but, nevertheless, topical problems in this way today. First and foremost, it is necessary to resume the activities of the parliamentary friendship group, which is actually passive due to the realignment of political forces in Japan. It is also necessary to set up a committee for business cooperation between the business associations and unions of Armenia and Japan. "We should start from these formats and then speed up the attraction of investments", the Ambassador stressed.  
Poghosyan said that among the other projects are an Armenian-Japanese IT forum and further technical assistance on Japan's part for the programs to reconstruct the Yeghvard reservoir and to fight landslides. 

The Ambassador said that Japan has already stopped supporting Armenia as one of the world's poorest nations and has refocused to implement training and consulting programs.

When asked by ArmInfo about possibilities for Japanese investments in the Armenian economy, Ambassador of Japan to Russia (and also to Armenia) Tikahito Harada said that this will depend on how attractive and non-risky Armenia will be for Japanese investors. 

"Armenia has to show that it has favorable conditions for investment programs," Harada said. 
He said that the Japanese authorities will not interfere in the activities of their private companies and noted that it is early yet to speak about legislative initiatives as long as there are no commercial ties. 

According to Harada, Japanese companies seek profit and if the Armenians manage to convince them that they will be able to succeed in their country, there will be investments.

According to official statistics, there are no direct Japanese investments in Armenia. In Jan-Sept 2013 as compared with Jan-Sept 2012 the Armenian-Japanese trade turnover dropped by 9.3% to $71.1mln, with almost all of it being Japanese imports.