Monday, January 18 2016 12:18

 One Village One Product  (OVOP) project funded by JICA will be continued in Armenia, Akihiro Tsukamoto, Coordinator of JICA Armenian Connection Office, told ArmInfo on sidelines of the final seminar on Armenian One Village One Product  (OVOP) method and experiences and closing event of the SME DNC - JICA "Development of local production and promotion of local brands in Armenia" joint project in Yerevan on January 18.

He said the draft new project between Japan and Armenia on the given issue will be signed within the current year, but the terms of the project implementation are not known yet. In 2016, start-ups for 74 million drams will be funded. As many as 11 tourism enterprises will receive 46.5 million drams assistance.  Starting February 1 2016, each loan will total 7 million drams versus current up to 5 million drams. 

During the previous three years of the project's implementation, the Japanese government provided almost $2 million assistance to more than 250 small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), with overwhelming majority of them being start-up enterprises engaged in water production, winemaking, cheese making and tourism. The funds were provided at 100% guarantee, 10% annual interest and up to 5 years maturity period. Akihiro Tsukamoto said the size of a loan will be increased to 7 million drams starting February 1.

Akihiro Tsukamoto said the Armenian project was recognized the best by the JICA monitoring of similar projects in the world.  The SME-related legislation of Armenia mostly meets the legislation of Japan. 

To recall, since 1997, the Government of Japan via JICA has been providing technical and financial assistance to Armenia in terms of not-large grant projects that have exceeded 2.5 billion yens already.  There are also big loan agreements. On March 29, 2005, the Government of Armenia and Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) signed a Loan Agreement ARM-P2 on implementation of "Yerevan Combined Cycle Co-generation Power Plant Project" that was put into exploitation in 2010. On the basis of the project, JBIC provided Armenia a preferential loan of 15918 million Japanese yens at the annual interest of 0.75%, with 40 years of repayment period (including grace period of 10 years). National Assembly of the RA ratified the Agreement on July 27, 2005.  Negotiations are currently underway for construction of another power unit of the Yerevan Therman Power Plant.