YEREVAN, AUGUST 28, ARMENPRESS. Armenia’s government gives a leading role to the military-industrial complex in the economy, with a view that this complex should be in accordance with the latest technological standards, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the meeting with the members of the Union of Military Manufacturers and heads of companies of military-industrial field. “In the long-run we also must have an opportunity to show technological initiatives and produce technological innovations”, he said.

According to the PM, the military-industrial complex has several key significance for the government which all are of strategic nature. “The first one is that our country should have a strong military-industrial complex: this derives from the security environment we are in today. The security needs of our country obviously lead to this thinking. The second one is the development of Armenia’s economy, the creation of jobs and the vision to make Armenia a country with a highly-qualified labor force. And the military-industrial complex is a field which supposes qualification starting from a worker, in other words highly-qualified workers, craftsmen and so on. And of course, the export strategy is also very important for us, and our strategic course should be such that Armenia’s military-industrial complex must have an opportunity to work on foreign markets. That’s why we have created a ministry of high technological industry to solve these issues, but, of course, we first of all meant the military-industrial complex”, he said.

PM Pashinyan added that before achieving these strategic goals they should be able to ensure a certain internal market for the military-industrial complex taking into account the country’s internal needs. “We should be able to ensure state orders for this complex to live, develop and be able to produce a competitive product. This is one of our major goals as a preliminary stage for the development of the military-industrial complex”, he said.

The PM noted that a knowledge-based industrial economy is needed, the military-industrial complex should be the moving force of this economy. “We should assist with all possible means so that it will be competitive both in the domestic and foreign markets”, he said.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan