Economy Minister published inflated data on the export of goods of Armenian origin
Aysor
Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan announced a significant increase in the export of goods of Armenian origin, but the study of the data shows a different picture. A significant part of that growth was formed at the expense of jewelry, which is highly controversial to present as a product of Armenian origin. In that list we also see mobile phones, when there is no production of phones in Armenia. All this exaggerates the indicators of products of Armenian origin and creates a misleading picture of the state of the economy, “Hetq” writes.
On February 5, Minister of Economy Gevorg Papoyan posted on his Facebook page that in 2025, about $4.5 billion worth of products of Armenian origin were exported from Armenia. Compared to 2024, it increased by around 10%, and compared to 2021, by 72%.
The methodology of calculating the export of products of Armenian origin is already controversial, but we decided to get more detailed information from the Ministry of Economy about what products we are talking about.
It turns out that in 2025, about $4.5 billion of “Armenian origin” products, $1 billion are only jewelry.
The problem is that it is too big a volume for Armenia and it is highly doubtful whether there are enough factories and specialists in Armenia to produce so many products.
After the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, a large amount of Russian gold is being re-exported through Armenia, including in the form of jewelry. This is a re-export proven by the fact that after 2022, the gold imported from Russia to Armenia has increased sharply, and the export of gold and jewelry from Armenia to the UAE and Hong Kong has also increased sharply.
For example, in 2021, with which Papoyan also compares, only $75 million worth of jewelry was exported from Armenia, according to the Statistical Committee. Therefore, how likely is such a “miracle” in Armenia’s jewelry industry that after four years the export of “local” jewelry will exceed $1 billion?
By the way, as a result of this dubious growth of the jewelry industry, the image of the industry has also been artificially inflated.
In 2025, most of the “jewelry” was exported to the United Arab Emirates, the rest mainly to Hong Kong.
This directly shows that Gevorg Papoyan published inflated data on the export of goods of Armenian origin. And, if we exclude jewelry and a few more product groups, such as mobile phones, it will be clear that the growth of exports of local products is much more modest.
Even if we consider jewelry as a product of local origin, talking about general growth and not presenting which products caused this can also mislead the public.
In 2024, in the list of “goods of Armenian origin” to be exported, jewelry occupies a large place. According to the Ministry of Economy, local products worth about $4.1 billion were exported in the mentioned year, of which $858 million or 21% were jewelry items.
