YEREVAN, JUNE 27, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called on his Cabinet today to build the economy’s logic long-term and mid-term on minimizing or abolishing the exports of raw materials and non-processed products from Armenia.

Pashinyan was addressing economic indicator data for May issued by the Statistics Committee.

“In strategic terms our economy in the long-term and mid-term perspective must be built with the logic that the exports of raw materials and non-processed products from Armenia must be minimized or abolished. Meaning, in a long-term perspective our economy must be built in a way for not minerals to be exported from our country, but steel products. Moreover, maximally processed, that is – not only ingots, but finished products. Certainly, we are now happy that the strawberry and now the apricot season is beginning and we will have exports volumes, but our long-term strategy must be to reach exports when unprocessed apricots or strawberry aren’t taken out of the country,” he said.

Pashinyan emphasized that the government should also contribute to these trends in order for new production cycles to appear in Armenia.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan