Armenia needs to develop business-networks with its Diaspora: Rob Kitchin

YEREVAN, November 16, /ARKA/. Armenia needs to develop business-networks with its Diaspora in the areas of financial services, technologies, health and tourism, Rob Kitchin, a professor of Dublin National University, said in Yerevan last Saturday during a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Armenian National Competitiveness Fund.

According to him, creation and development of new business networks will allow to use more efficiently the entire potential of the Armenian Diaspora, including its financial, economic and business opportunities.

He said his country has 60 such networks with 30,000 members across the world who are specialized in working with different governments and different economy and science sectors.

He said before to create such a network Armenia should go through several stages, particularly, to study and work out pilots programs to find out the potential and the opportunities of the Diaspora, to determine institutional directions and the best international experience. 

He suggested that Armenia should keep away from creating ambitious models, and use instead the experience of Scotland and New Zealand.

In his opinion, it is necessary in the first place to create a list of limited sectors and begin with several directions based either on geography or industry type, to build an elite sector that would serve as a locomotive to implement other projects and form venture funds. 

Andre Andonian, director-partner of McKinsey&Company (Germany), who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Armenian National Competitiveness Fund, said the Armenian Diaspora runs already a great deal of different networks operating in all big countries and cities of the world. The question, he said, is how to create a unified model that would meet our interests.

But according to Avetik Chubarian, director-partner of McKinsey&Company for Russia, there is no ideal model to work with Diaspora. He said Armenians need only to feel that they are a 10 million nation, a successful, integral nation with their own sovereign country.

The meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Armenian National Competitiveness Fund was held in Yerevan on November 14-15.  -0-