If you are unemployed, this message is about you – Narek Karapetyan

Narek Karapetyan, First Vice President of the Tashir Group of Companies and coordinator of the Our Way movement, has recorded a video message addressed to everyone currently facing unemployment.

“If you or your neighbors are unemployed, then this message is about you. I’d like to present a detailed breakdown of Samvel Karapetyan’s weekly address—what he’s announcing and what the ‘Our Way’ movement can offer our country.

At present, there are officially 180,000 unemployed people in Armenia, and unofficially up to 500,000 people are without jobs. Imagine—500,000 people unemployed in a country of 3 million. When we look around, we see that 90% of the products and goods in our homes are imported. Very few things are actually Armenian. This is because most of what we consume is brought from China, Russia, and other countries.

What is stopping Armenians—who are hardworking people—from producing these goods locally instead of importing them from 2,000–3,000 kilometers away? The answer is simple: there is no clear economic policy.

The main goal of the ‘Our Way’ movement is to propose a simple economic policy to finally solve the issue of unemployment. Believe me, unemployment is not as big a problem as they try to make it seem. In a country of three million, there cannot be 500,000 people without jobs.

What we need is industrialization—factories built where they once stood. I am not saying we should rebuild the same factories, but new ones, so we can produce our own goods. Right now, we buy $4 billion more in goods than we sell each year.

Our country is losing $4 billion a year. The ‘Our Way’ movement will offer a proposal, and we are confident that with the right approach, we can largely solve the unemployment issue—maybe not completely, but significantly.

The second point I want to mention is agriculture, which I will present to you another day. In agriculture, we are working on a concept called ‘procurement, procurement, procurement.’ The main issue in Armenia is the lack of procurement companies. There are only a few companies that export goods, like Spayka and others. We need dozens of companies like them. That way, Armenian products will become competitive, and farmers will finally be able to sell their goods at higher prices.

Join us, and together we can change our homeland. Thank you,” said Narek Karapetyan.