YEREVAN, April 20. /ARKA/. The Armenian government is making efforts to develop capital markets, Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan told a Forbes Global Russians webinar on Tuesday.

'We have a capital market development program, and we are trying to make the sector develop and work not only for Armenia but also for foreign markets. We are not very good at it yet, but we are moving forward. I think we will have significant improvement in that direction in the nearest future," he said.

According to Kerobyan, before the 2018 ‘velvet revolution' it was impossible to work transparently and profitably at the same time: the economic model was such that only those who had patronage or government connections could make money, which did not allow the capital market to develop.

"Now there are a lot of companies that have been operating transparently for several years. Now we see that after three successful years of transparent work, there is already a fairly large cohort of companies that consider raising both private and public capital," he said.

The Minister stressed that last year there was a major IPO of the Armenian Acba Bank, and this year the authorities expect several more companies to  enter the public market.

"We ourselves, as a government, have already invested in several private funds and are ready to do it several more times so that the private capital market  also  develop and that a company has several options to attract private capital up to, for instance, $10 million," he said.

In 2021, Acba Bank carried out a public offering of 500,000 shares for a total of 7.5 billion drams. ($1 - 470.83 drams). -0-