Promoting Trade and Legislative Reform

The programs focused on the formation of a leasing company, emphasized trade facilitation and developed Armenia's capital markets with new legislation and educational programs.

Working with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Trade and the Armenian Securities Commission, the project assisted with drafting and passing key economic legislation as part of the World Bank SAC-4 loan agreement. Other key accomplishments include the formation of a leasing company with USAID (DAI) and the organization of a three-day multi-million dollar investor conference in New York with the Presidents of Armenia and the World Bank Group, the American Embassy, USAID and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Armenian export firms were given technical assistance through the program to be effective in the conference.

Armenia is a country where the current corporate governance related laws are assessed as relatively sound when compared to similar laws of other countries in the region. This result comes as no surprise since the International Finance Corporation ("IFC") assisted the country with a comprehensive Corporate Governance Project from 1999 to 2001. This project played an important role in introducing the concept of corporate governance in Armenia by working not only with the public sector but also with the private sector in advocating good corporate governance standards.

EBRD, May 2003.

The program organized educational programs as part of IFC’s post privatization technical assistance programs for judges, journalists, government officials, accountants and other constituencies on corporate governance practices in cooperation with USAID, ABA/CEELI and the TACIS Accounting Training Center.

Project Management: Gregory Maassen (Head of Office - Armenia, Program Manager, IFC), Davit Karapetyan (Deputy Project Manager, IFC), David Lawrence (Senior Operations Manager, IFC), Darrin Hartzler (Senior Operations Manager, IFC). Duration: 1999-2002.

IFC 2001 Armenia Investor Conference Plaza Hotel NY (548.96 kB)

IFC Armenia Project In Focus (410.68 kB)