Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Armenia Prime Minister: “U.S. Ambassador’s comments to the point and acceptable to us.”
On the sidelines of his Gyumri visit of June 30, Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan touched upon U.S. Ambassador John Heffern’s comments made during DigiTech business forum that governments should intervene as little as possible in the IT sector so that the operators could choose their own path of development.
The head of government stated in part, “First of all, I have to thank the Ambassador of the United States of America for his interest in the advancement of information technologies in Armenia. We were in Silicon Valley, and the Ambassador took the opportunity to share with the audience his impressions and the lessons we learned together in Silicon Valley. The Ambassador’s comments were to the point and acceptable to us. He meant the period when an institutional framework is being created for the IT sector and governments should refrain from interfering in competition, leaving to the market to the task of providing incentives. These were the lessons we brought back to Yerevan. Unfortunately, the Ambassador’s remarks were subsequently misconstrued by some commentators who tried to attribute them to the Government of the Republic of Armenia. This is not the case: he was just making general judgments, with which I fully agree.”
