The following is an Armenian government press release.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had a working dinner with representatives of the Swiss-Armenian Chamber of Commerce and Swiss businessmen in Zurich. Former President of the Swiss National Council Dominique de Buman was in attendance.

Nikol Pashinyan made a speech, after which he answered the participants’ questions. In his remarks Nikol Pashinyan stated, in part:

“Dear Guests, Fellow Armenians, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to meet all of you here and discuss issues of mutual interest. This forum and this venue present an opportunity for us to ask questions, identify problems and come up with solutions that will enable better economic relations between our countries. And we can and should do this together.

The first question we should answer is as follows: Where are we? Before we go into our vision of the future, we first need to take a step back, look at the path that our country has followed, and ask ourselves whether we want to keep walking down this road.

Now Armenia stands at the crossroads between economic prosperity and stagnation. Historic transformations have recently happened in Armenia. Non-violent velvet revolution held last spring led to the victory of democracy in our country.

The snap parliamentarian elections held last December further strengthened democratic achievements. These fundamental changes are irreversible - they are based on the will of our people and the overwhelming consensus in our society.

Today our Government has an unprecedented high level of legitimacy and public support. Based on this high-level public confidence Armenian Government adopted an ambitious reform agenda. As a result, the situation in Armenia already fundamentally differs from the one that we had before the revolution. In particular, the level of corruption has been drastically reduced; we have almost eradicated monopolies; very serious measures have been taken to strengthen independent judiciary system, establish rule of law and a level playing field for all economic and political actors.

Despite significant progress made in some crucial areas such as ensuring market contestability and eliminating corruption in the public sector, there is still a vast amount of work to be done.

Today we have to complete another revolution – the economic revolution – in order to justify the trust and expectations of our people.

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