Armenia cannot afford to “squeeze” into the struggle between geopolitical centers, however, being a small country, it should effectively use all platforms, not remaining aloof from the world trends. Vardan Aramyan, former Minister of Finance, international consultant on public finance management, stated this in a conversation with Sputnik Armenia, presenting his vision of Armenia's position in the process of geopolitical and economic transformations.
“There is a lot of talk today about changing course towards the European Union. But if we look at Armenia's foreign trade flows, we see that since 2018, trade turnover with EAEU member states, particularly Russia, has increased several times, while with the EU has remained almost at the same level. It is the same with the United States,” the former minister believes.
In his opinion, Armenia has quite a big potential for realization in the EAEU. At the same time, when you are in an economic zone where you have not yet fully realized your potential, you can't just cut all ties and turn in another direction, he says.
Aramyan notes that membership and cooperation are different formats, having joined one economic union, a country can actively cooperate with other economic units as well.
“Several years ago, as a member country of the EAEU, Armenia signed the SEPA agreement with the European Union, which was nothing less than a deep and comprehensive reform agenda. It included both liberalization of visas and reform of state institutions,” the interlocutor gives an example.
Today is an active period of new global transformations, and Armenia has an opportunity to make a new step towards another promising regional association - BRICS.
According to Aramyan's conviction, our country should use this platform as actively as possible.
“For example, Turkey has applied to join BRICS and is leading Azerbaijan. Of course, India has impeded Turkey's progress in this matter, as each member country of the association has its own political interests and expectations from this structure,” Aramyan notes.
Of the five founding countries of BRICS, China and Russia, according to the former minister, act as a counterweight to NATO. At the same time, Brazil, South Africa and India would like to see the structure more as a complementary, rallying unit, as they have serious political problems with other geopolitical poles. Iran in turn, according to Aramian, echoes the positions of China and Russia.
When any new major player applies for membership, and Turkey is quite a major player today, political interests and positions collide here in addition to economic interests, Aramyan said, commenting on India's actions to block Turkey's membership.
“Judging by the IMF forecasts, once again the driving force behind global economic growth of more than 3% will be the BRICS member countries, which will record higher growth rates than projected for the Euro-Atlantic bloc. This means that the economic weight of this structure is already quite high,” the former minister said.
According to him, in 2015 the member states of the union created an international financial structure on the basis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - an investment bank with a capital of $50 billion. Today they are already talking about creating their own alternative to the international payment system Swift, as well as their own international currency. According to Aramyan, these are the goals of BRICS with which it declares its intention to compete with such hegemons as the United States and Europe.
Recall that delegations of 35 states and 6 international organizations took part in the BRICS summit held in Kazan on October 22-24.
Reprinted from https://news.am/
Comments