"We are studying the hotel sector to find out how foreigners who have moved to Armenia and tourists affect the generation of taxes. If we take only the accommodation and catering sectors, their turnover has increased by 75 billion drams this year (about $185 million)," Rustam Badasyan, the head of Armenia’s State Revenue Committee (SRC) said.
He refrained from specifying what share of that growth was due to the influx of tourists and what share was natural growth, but suggested that most of the growth resulted from the influx of foreigners and tourists.
"This is, of course, a very positive phenomenon for the economy, but it should be neither underestimated nor overestimated, as the share of this segment in the GDP is only about 1.9%," he said.
According to the Armenian Ministry of Economy, about 120-150 thousand foreign citizens have relocated to Armenia since March of this year, largely from Russia, (some of them returned to their homeland, some of them received residence permits).
About 850 new companies and 350 individual entrepreneurs have been registered in the country, and some 100 thousand individual bank accounts have been opened in the banks.
According to the Ministry of Economy, about 1 million 240 thousand tourists visited Armenia in the first nine months of 2022, against 619 thousand visits during the same period last year, ARKA reports.
