Representatives of a Slovakian-based investment company announced on Tuesday that they have held fresh negotiations with the Armenian government on their proposals to revive Armenia’s largest chemical plant that was declared bankrupt late last year.
They said the company called the EU-Asia Business Finance Center still stands ready to invest $100 million in the troubled Nairit plant located on the southern outskirts of Yerevan.
The chemical giant manufacturing synthetic rubber employed several thousand people in Soviet times. It has struggled to remain afloat since the early 1990s, repeatedly changing foreign owners and operators in murky deals overseen by successive Armenian governments.
Nairit has had only 250 or so employees since the government, which now controls the debt-ridden plant, laid off 1,700 of its remaining workers in January 2016. In November, a Yerevan court declared the company bankrupt because of its failure to pay electricity bills totaling $2.6 million.
The court ruling came shortly after EU-Asia Business Finance Center executives led by Ashot Grigorian, the company’s Armenian-born chairman, presented Prime Minister Karen Karapetian with a plan to reactivate the moribund factory. Karapetian effectively rejected the plan, saying that it is not convincing enough.
Speaking at a joint news conference, Karen Israelian, Nairit’s former executive director, and two senior executives of the company registered in the Slovak capital Bratislava revealed that they have held more talks on the matter with Armenia’s Deputy Prime Minister Vache Gabrielian. Israelian seemed satisfied with the talks. “I quickly understood one thing: the government wants Nairit to operate but has no solutions,” he said.
Israelian also said the European investors could relaunch large-production operations at Nairit and create at least 1,500 jobs there if the government grants it tax breaks and assumes the plant’s debts totaling around $100 million. They also need to audit the company’s books before making a final decision, he added.
Gary Neville, another EU-Asia Business Finance Center representative, cautioned that Nairit’s reactivation would be a “long and difficult process.” “But I hope that we will sign this week an agreement [with the government] that will be the first step in that long process,” he said.
The government has so far made no public statements on the renewed negotiations with the investors interested in Nairit. The latter relies heavily on natural gas in its production operations. Karapetian managed Armenia’s gas distribution network from 2001-2010.
The World Bank argued against attempts to revive Nairit as a result of an audit conducted last year.
Facebook Forum