News - Why Armenia has not appointed representatives in World Trade Organization?

In 2023, the state budget of Armenia planned to allocate 310.7 million drams to appoint representatives in the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as trade representatives in some countries of the world. This was announced by Minister of Economy Gevorg Papoyan during the debates on last year’s state budget implementation report at the joint meeting of the parliamentary standing committees on Friday. However, as the minister mentioned, the budget was later reduced and amounted to only 62.5 million drams. "The actual appointments did not take place. Thus, the [budget] performance was 60.6 million drams. The problem is that, to be honest, there is a big difference between the requirements of the [economy] ministry [of Armenia] regarding external attachés and the amount that the state is able to pay; in particular, regarding the demands made to the specialists and the amount being paid to them," said Papoyan. He noted that the Ministry of Economy of Armenia is unable to pay for the specialists that the state would like to have. "We don't want to appoint people who would like to work with this money to the positions of trade attachés; that is, there is a big discrepancy between our desires and capacity," the economy minister emphasized. He added, however, that this refers to the many vacancies in the Ministry of Economy of Armenia.