YEREVAN, November 1. /ARKA/. The government will encourage companies to enter the IPO market, Armenia’s Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told an extraordinary session of the parliament today.
In response to a lawmaker’s question whether it is possible to raise the threshold of insuring bank deposits he said the trust of customers in local banks is quite high, which was not affected even by the velvet revolution.’ Quite the contrary, he said, it even increased surprising international experts.

He said many people describe the banking system’s ability to survive the velvet revolution without shocks as ‘fantastic; moreover, confidence in banks is on the rise as well as the volume of deposits.

"Given the current trends, we considered the possibility of raising the deposit insurance threshold but decided to approach this issue differently. We are now searching for companies that will be ready to enter the IPO market," said Pashinyan, stressing that the government is ready to encourage such companies.
He said this will allow the population to diversify their investments by buying company shares, to activate the stock exchange and the capital market.

"This will allow citizens to invest not only in bank deposits, but also receive other incomes. It will allow companies to attract additional funds," said Pashinyan, stressing that this could also prompt the banks to start cutting loan interest rates.

In the first 9 months of 2018, 83 transactions with shares were effected at the NASDAQ OMX Armenia Stock Exchange worth 2.38 billion drams, 1,104 transactions with bonds to the tune 13.8 billion drams and 164 transactions with repos worth 4.7 billion drams. ($ 1 - AMD 486.24). - 0-