The American Chamber of Commerce in Armenia (AmCham) has issued a statement, mentioning that the reforms in the mining sector in Armenia should comply with international standards, which will create an opportunity to build a viable, sustainable and transparent mining industry.

“While AmCham shares the concerns on the lack of adequate environmental management standards in the industry in Armenia, it also sees that the industry globally has rigorously addressed this issue in the last decades, with a number of institutional policies for the environmental and social management in mining.

To this extent, AmCham believes that international frameworks for responsible mining such as the IFC Performance Standards, EBRD Performance Requirements, ICMM Standards and a number of other policy requirements can be applied to the Armenian mining sector.

This will raise the responsibility bar for the industry in Armenia even higher. Following the example of AmCham member companies, such as Lydian Armenia that has already set the bar to comply with these standards for its Amulsar project and that can be further applied as a good benchmarking opportunity,” reads the statement of the American Chamber of Commerce in Armenia.