Poghosyan at the opening of APMA

Armine Grigoryan
Special to ArmeniaNow
Published: 20 February, 2009
To alleviate the consequences of the economic crisis as much as possible, the government has initiated a program aimed at production of goods for export.

During one of the government sessions in the last months of 2008 Armenia’s Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan announced that the government had set up operating headquarters for submitting business proposals.

Shortly afterwords, during of the January sessions in 2009, the Prime Minister announced that a considerable number of business proposals were submitted to the headquarters. A few have been approved by the government, but there are no project managers to implement them.

This announcement by the Prime Minister generated considerable feedback. Professionals who have been specializing in this sphere within recent years are glad that there is finally a demand for “project managers” by the government.

“In the Soviet Union’s management model we did not have the concept of projects; there was the concept of planning. After independence, they began to understand gradually what the concept of projects is. Now, fortunately, they have begun to understand the concept of a project manager, and this is reassuring,” the founder of the Armenian Project Management Association (APMA) Albert Poghosyan says.

Today’s Armenia faces new demands. The contemporary professions that appeared in the 1980s, such as management, public relations, and so on, are rapidly developing, whereas in Armenia the demand for project managers or PR managers is just beginning to evolve.

The demands for the efficient organization of contemporary market economy are taken into account when implementing educational reforms. A Chair of Management was established in 1992 at the Armenian University of Economics.

In 2002 the Chair was the first to publish a textbook on management, which will be re-published for the third time. The university out managers every year, leading some to wonder why the Prime Minister announce that there are none.

The provost of the Armenian University of Economics Yuri Suvaryan points out that to be a project manager it is not enough to have a university degree only. It is necessary to have extensive work experience in management and profound knowledge about the sphere. “Only on the basis of all this will it be possible for a manager to undertake designing and implementing a project. Theoretical knowledge can be used, but to apply it one needs professional experience,” he says.

The 2009 budget was outlined in accordance with the principle of project budgeting. This means that to get any kind of funding from the budget, the projects should be submitted to the government. Only the approved projects will be funded and implemented. The objective is to spend the budget resources efficiently.

“During the discussion of the 2009 budget it became clear that there is a problem with the quality and efficient implementation of the outlined projects. It is somewhat difficult to give examples, because, in fact, it refers to all – state and private – project designs and the organization of their efficient implementation, and all these issues are urgent,” Head of RA Government Staff David Sargsyan says.

Gaining professional experience requires a relevant field, and the field almost does not exist. It turns out that while plenty of Armenians are being trained, their knowledge has been useless for application due to the lack of opportunities. And specialists in the field say that such knowledge becomes obsolete after four or five years.

“Project management is the management of people. Being a good owner of an enterprise does not mean being a good manager. If this is understood in Armenia, it will be quite good,” Poghosyan says, comparing the Armenian economic situation to a damaged ship that neither sinks nor moves.

“Everybody is busy draining the water from the ship to prevent it from sinking, but the water keeps pouring in from the other side. And there is nobody to close the holes,” Poghosyan says.

Provost Suvaryan disagrees with this viewpoint. According to him, our economy went through a profound crisis at the beginning of the 1990s, which is not only a typical phenomenon for a country in transition, but also the result of inefficient management.

“That was a great shock that may not have happened, but did. For instance, how can one explain the closing down of Armenia’s nuclear power station and its re-opening that required enormous expenses, or the closing down and re-opening of metal-molding factories? We ruined the whole chemical industry and now we are having difficulty restoring it. It is impossible to create a flawless market economy in a short period of time,” Suvaryan says.

Poghosyan says there are two important changes that are needed. “First, we should think about long-term projects, for instance, for the forthcoming 30 years. Second, older people should begin to trust the youth. 55-60-year-old people cannot think about the future 30 years, because they have already lived most of their lives. If trust towards younger people increases, knowledge will be updated, mentality will change. The times when Marx’s Capital was used as a guidebook have passed. All we need is just one smart manager,” he says.

The government initiative appears to be a good first step among those who agree that the time for analyzing has past and the time for action is at hand.

To that end, the Prime Minister’s office is planning further attention to the need. According to PM press secretary Diana Mnatsakanyan: “A series of meetings have already been organized by the government. We are planning to conduct training workshops and fill the gap.”