Yerevan/Mediamax/. Unequal competitive conditions and corruption strongly hinder economic development of Armenia, Director of BSC Training and Consulting Company Samvel Gevorgyan stated today.

Mediamax reports that, speaking in Yerevan today at a news conference, devoted to the issues of developing small and medium enterprise in Armenia, Samvel Gevorgyan urged the country’s leadership to speed up economic reforms, expressing an opinion that “if we are late for a few more years, it will already be too late”. According to him, Armenian authorities with great delay react to global challenges, and this fact leads to decrease in the level of competitiveness of the country’s economy.

“As to correlation of taxes to the GDP, Armenia occupies the 159th place among 183 countries, and this index perfectly demonstrates the scales of shadow economy and corruption”, Samvel Gevorgyan stated.

He stressed importance of even development of regions of Armenia by means of encouraging sectors of economy, which possess great potential. He also noted that declaring a particular sector a priority implies certain advantages, and in case with Armenia, “these are only words”.

Executive Director of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Armenia (UIEA) Gagik Makaryan noted that the segment of small and medium enterprise provides only 42% of GDP and up to 250 thousand workplaces in conditions, when the total number of employed in the country makes 1.1mln people.

Gagik Makaryan expressed concern that the speeds of SME growth in Armenia remain at a low level (annual 0.6%), conditioning this by uneven conditions of market competition, low labor productivity, absence of high quality management and difficult access to financial resources.