Saturday, 28 April 2012
PM: We Can Identify Fields Where Armenia May Be Leader
Armenia’s national competitiveness is a key challenge and we need to find our country’s comparative advantages in order to represent Armenia as a competitive country the global map. This was announced by the Prime Minister at “Innovation, competitiveness and economic growth” conference.
“We must build up a solid groundwork for competition. This means that we should think globally to understand what is the main engine in the modern world, what is the rationale behind the global developments in order to realize Armenia’s place and role. In this respect, the global crisis has exposed the threats by demonstrating our State’s economic, social and political strengths and weaknesses. It compels us to learn lessons from the crisis,” the Prime Minister stated in part.
According to Tigran Sargsyan, the 21st century drives nations into intellectual competition. The way in this race will be led by those nations thoughtful of knowledge that have created the necessary infrastructure for scientific research. “We went through many ordeals during the past few years, and we can identify fields where we can lead the way and be the best in the world,” the Prime Minister said.
Concerning the public-private sector partnership, the Prime Minister noted that the National Competitiveness Council is the embodiment of that methodology. It is supposed to bring together the potential of public and private sectors to solve competitiveness problems. The head of government said that the Council suggests using public resources to co-finance different programs in cooperation with the private sector.
”This structure is intended to increase the competitiveness of the country by using not only Armenia’s potential, but also that of the Diaspora. This is why the people included in the National Competitiveness Council have succeeded in other countries,” Tigran Sargsyan noted.
The Prime Minister said the state-private partnership approach in different countries has led to success. In this regard, the State has created a new platform for cooperation with the private sector considering our comparative advantages in the field of export. “Here decision-making is not dominated by the State: instead it allows private sector representatives to make decisions. The State only assumes the obligation to support investments. In this respect, the terms of competition are equal for all branches” the head of government stated.
According to Tigran Sargsyan, the IT sector is the most powerful sector to increase productivity. Considering that the Armenian IT sector has been on the upgrade in recent years, the Prime Minister expressed hope that its potential can be used in the above 11 industries.
“At the same time, we should have a competitive educational system. We must build the knowledge-university-production chain. This means that the cooperation with educational institutions will be essential to the State. Competitive will be those nations strong with effective educational systems,” the Prime Minister said.
The conference was organized by Microsoft’s Armenia headquarters, the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia in cooperation with the Government.
