The Armenian government will spend 1.7 billion AMD ($4.4M) to pay off the debt of the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) that is in the process of being liquidated.

The ANIF was established in 2019 to consolidate and effectively manage the ownership of Armenian state-owned enterprises, to promote export growth and investments in Armenia by providing co-financing in large-scale projects at their initial stage of development.

In 2021, the ANIF and Air Arabia announced a joint venture to launch Fly Arna, Armenia’s new national carrier. While Armenia invested at least 4.8 billion AMD ($12.4M) in Fly Arna, the project proved to be a failure and the airlines suspended flights earlier this year.

The fate of another ANIF project, a joint venture with Masdar, the UAE’s state-owned renewable energy company to build a 200-megawatt solar power plant in Armenia’s Aragatzotn Province, remains up in the air given the dissolution of the ANIF.

Another questionable ANIF venture was to spend some $500,000 to co-finance the launch of the Hard Rock Café in downtown Yerevan.

In 2023, the International Monetary Fund questioned the wisdom of investing public resources in the hospitality sector and noted that the ANIF faces problems of transparency and accountability.

The IMF, in a 2024 report, wrote: “Due to very limited disclosure, it is impossible to assess the viability and rationale of ANIF’s investment initiatives. The information on how the investment choices relate to the company’s mandate/strategy, the outcomes and financial performance of these investments, investment and risk policies are either lacking or are not publicly available.”