2020 marked a period of a deep crisis in Armenia’s economy, which suffered an unprecedented decline due to political factors, Suren Parsyan, an economist affiliated with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaksutyun (ARF-D), said today, attributing the negative dynamics to the November 9 ceasefire on Nagorno-Karabakh (Karabakh).
He noted that the economic and transport links, envisaged under the document, serve mainly the interests of Azerbaijani the side (offering a safe transport communication corridor with Nakhicheven) without any regard to Armenia’s security or real interests.
Admitting that railway construction may be both time- and money-consuming (as opposed to motorway construction), the economist warned that projects of the kind (that normally last for decades) lose their economic value in the course of time, “offering potentially no benefit to Armenia”.
“Azerbaijan, in general, is not interested in the exploitation of that railway at the moment. They have developed a railway corridor that would connect Azerbaijan with the Islamic Republic. And Azerbaijan has even provided credit assets to Iran to enable that country to realize the project, facithereby facilitating the freight transportation through the Persian Gulf. That’s of interest to Iran too, as that region is populated by Talish people, and its development practically gains also a strategic significance for the Iranian side. That is to say, neither Iran nor Azerbaijan are interested in carrying out freight transportation through Meghri or Julfa,” Parsyan told reporters.