Armenia Should Solve the Problem of Diversification of Exported Goods to India

• 06.13.2017, 18:19
•  EEU,  Armenia

Last week, the Eurasian Economic Union and India signed a joint statement on the start of negotiations around the establishment of the Free Economic Zone (FEZ). Signing on behalf of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Trade Minister of the Eurasian Economic Community, Veronika Nikitishina said that the completion of the negotiations around the FEZ in 2-3 years will be a "very good result".

Free trade zone is a type of deep economic integration that gives the member countries the possibility of unlimited trade with each other, without taxes and customs duties. In the context of what has been said, the creation of FEZ between the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and India will not only increase gross exports and trade with India, but will also contribute to the development of trade relations between India and individual member countries of the EAEU. Naturally, the  future negotiations will discuss the features of the two economies (the EAEU and India). Meanwhile, as a primary effect, the parties interested in the FEZ may expect to develop and deepen the already established trade relations with India. In this regard Armenia is not an exception.

The Armenian-Indian trade relations have a solid foundation. During the past ten years, the statistics of the Armenian-Indian trade turnover had the following form.[1].

As it is seen, the given statistics of ten years shows that the Armenian-Indian trade turnover was accompanied by a negative balance for Armenia. It is in this direction that work should be done ahead the creation of the FEZ between EAEU-India. It should be noted that from India Armenia mainly imports meat products, tea, rice, precious stones, medicine, textiles, jewelry, manufactured goods, goods made of plastic and linoleum, electrical appliances, and in turn exports precious and semiprecious stones, copper and copper goods, aluminum and products made of it, chemical products, non-ferrous metals, scrap metal and raw rubber.

That is, we have a task of diversifying the list of exported goods and increasing the volumes of goods currently being exported. 2-3 years mentioned by Nikitishina is sufficient for preparatory work in this direction.