MOSCOW — Trade turnover between Russia and Armenia in the first 10 months of 2024 reached $10.2 billion, which is twice as much as in the whole of 2023, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk said at a meeting of the Russian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation in Moscow, Russian news agency Tass reported.
“Our trade and economic ties continue to be on the rise. At least I will say that mutual trade between our countries is setting new records, reaching $10.2 billion in January-October. This is more than twice as much as last year, but this year is not over yet,” he noted.
Overchuk added that in order to implement trade and economic relations, Russia and Armenia have almost completely switched to settlements in national currencies, and the share of the Russian ruble in mutual settlements has reached 96.3%.
Overchuk also noted that at the moment, Russia is one of the main investors in Armenia.
“Our investments in the industrial projects in Armenia have reached $3.4 billion. More than 40 large Russian companies operate in Armenia. Some of them are the largest taxpayers,” he said.
“The almost two fold increase in trade is impressive,” Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan told journalists after the session of the commission co-headed by him and Overchuk. “We hope that another double-digit growth will be recorded by the next commission meeting.”
An Armenian government statement quoted Grigoryan as saying during the meeting: “I would like to once again reaffirm our firm commitment to … fully realizing the existing potential for the consistent development of cooperation between Armenia and Russia.”
The two vice-premiers said they discussed ways of further facilitating commercial links between their countries. Overchuk spoke of “a number of issues related to improving transport links between Armenia and Russia.”
Bilateral trade has skyrocketed since the February 2022 outbreak of the war in Ukraine, with Armenian entrepreneurs taking advantage of Western sanctions against Moscow to re-export many Western-manufactured goods to Russia.
Also, Armenia appears to have become this year a conduit for exports of Russian gold and diamonds to world markets and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular. This has been the main driving force behind the doubling of Russian-Armenian trade recorded in January-October 2024.
Armenian government data shows that Russian exports to Armenia tripled in the ten-month period to nearly $8.3 billion. The South Caucasus country in turn reported a sixfold surge in its exports to the UAE worth about $4.9 billion.
