Armenia’s Ministry of the Economy says it has no data as to what sectors of the country’s economy received foreign investment money in the first quarter of this year.

As we wrote earlier, based on the latest data published by Armenia’s Statistical Committee, the volume of foreign direct investment in Armenia in the first quarter of this year totaled AMD 343.5 billion (US$705 million).

It should be noted that data for the second quarter has not yet been published.

And since the Statistical Committee (SC) doesn’t published specifics as to the sectors receiving foreign investments and where the money comes from in its quarterly reports, Hetq tried to get this information from the ministry itself.

In his reply to our inquiry, Deputy Minister of the Economy Avag Avanesyan wrote:

"We inform you that the distribution of foreign investment receipts in the real sector of the Armenia’s economy, by type of activity, can be analyzed solely on an annual basis, since the Statistical Committee publishes data, which you need for the analysis you are requesting, on the aggregate foreign investment in the real sector of the Armenia’s economy by type of activity, in its annual reports.”  

As to our question regarding the country origins of the foreign investment, Avanesyan replied”

"The formats of the SC publications do not allow us to get the analysis you are looking for. The SC does not generally publish the gross flows of foreign investment in the real sector of the Armenian economy by type of activity, so it is not possible to perform such an analysis."

Hetq also asked the Ministry of Economy which foreign companies were investing in Armenia and asked to provide some examples. This, it turns out, is a statistical secret.

"In the context of the data published by the RA Statistical Committee, information on investments made by specific foreign companies is not published as it is considered a statistical secret," Deputy Minister Avanesyan replied.

It turns out that the Ministry of the Economy has scant investment information at its disposal. In fact, it possesses just as much information as we do by perusing the reports of the SC and crunching the numbers.

Since such essential baseline data is off limits to the press, it’s hard to verify whether the periodic pronouncements of government officials regarding increased foreign investment flows are true or not.

The Statistical Committee publishes the net inflows and gross flows of foreign investments made in Armenia on a quarterly basis. Net flows are the differences between return on investment and redemption; that is, how much money is left in the country as a result of investment.

The gross flows include the sum of the volumes of investments from 1988 until the end of the mentioned quarter. Based on gross flows, as a result of several calculations, we obtain the returns on investment. In other words, investment statistics are so complicated that it is even harder to present them to the reader.

At the same time, the Statistical Committee only annually publishes how much investment has been made and from which countries. Information on sectors and countries is only available in the Net Flow Statistics, and it is only on this basis that some conclusions can be drawn. That is, some baseline data is not published.

We should note that in the first quarter of 2019, the volume of foreign investment, total flows, amounted to 343.5 billion drams. (US$705 million at the average exchange rate of the quarter). Compared to the first quarter of 2018, the volume of investments increased by 38.7 billion drams or 12.7%.

Foreign Direct Investment alone amounted to 71.1 billion drams or US$146 million in the first quarter of this year. Direct investments decreased by 18.4 billion drams or 20.5% compared to the first quarter of 2018.