Research On Increasing The Competitiveness Of Armenian Economy In The Global Markets

This paper presents the vision of the author about the future competitiveness agenda of Armenia for increasing competitiveness of its particular industries and the overall economy, as a whole.The geopolitical and economical challenges that Armenia is facing now gives it no alternative except building highly competitive, knowledge-based economy. Because the topic relates to the country's overall economic policy, lots of scholars, public and private sector research organizations, and policymakers have conducted some research about both particular topics and the whole system. However, the result of the nowadays' economic performance of the country is highly unsatisfactory, thus signaling the need of more research and broader view perspectives.Being a patriot of Armenia, author can't look on the current situation of Armenia without trying to cause some positive changes. That's why the idea of preparing the paper with this topic appeared.This paper first investigates the current economic situation of Armenia, using very broad statistical and analytical base. Main macroeconomic indicators are analyzed, showing their dynamics during all the period of country's independence. Knowing the situation over the time let understand ongoing processes better and it can signal some threats and problems, concerning the whole economy. These analyze clearly show main structural problems of Armenian economy, such as ones, concerning the structure of GDP and its growth, dependency from external financial remittances and ongoing rapid increase of public foreign debts, and also the problems with monopolies, undeveloped technologies, unsatisfying level of research and innovation, and many more others.After understanding what was going on with the country's economic system and see where it stands currently, it is given the views of author about the possible ways of how to overcome these problems and challenges, to be able to build such an environment for business, to let the creation of globally competitive companies, clusters, industries and, in general, to build a globally competitive economy.The sector of agriculture and food processing, including alcohol beverages, was picked as a particular case for the further research and showing the mechanisms of creating a competitive advantage for the particular industry. The choice of this branch of economy is due to its enormous economic and social importance for Armenia. This branch comprises a very large part of the country's GDP, and this is the sector, where the most part of the country's population is employed. That's why the need of developing this sector is crucial for the country's overall economic performance. This study, again using large statistical data and author's observations, points the current problems in this sector, and offers policy areas, showing some mechanism of overcoming the current challenges and increasing its competitiveness, thus providing prosperity and higher living standards for the big part of the country's population.Forming clusters is one of the mechanisms, which allows governments build competitive industries. That's why cluster formation plays the main role in the offered development plan. For the agricultural products' cultivation and processing industries' further development and increasing competitiveness it was offered the creation of some clusters that can have crucial impact on the overall sectors performance. The description of these proposed clusters, the factors that will help in creation of these clusters, and their building mechanisms are also included in this paper.And in the end overall conclusion of the study is given that summarizes main points got from this research and emphasizes its main findings.