President Sarkissian hopes that the conference will be held also in Armenia: Next year the cybersecurity conference will be attended also by Armenian companies

“For me, visits like this one have a very concrete working nature,” President Sarkissian said in his conversation with the journalists speaking of his working visit to Italy. “We had an invitation from the Europe’s largest cybersecurity conference. I had the opportunity to make a statement and present Armenia. As a result, next year the cybersecurity conference will be attended also by the Armenian companies. The best 40-50 companies of the world participated at the conference but Armenia was not presented, while our presence is necessary to understand how the market works and to learn from the great. I hope that after this, one year later we will hold a large cybersecurity conference in Armenia.”

The President noted that Armenia’s main areas of development are not just simple information technologies. Speaking about presidential ATOM initiative, Armen Sarkissian said that with the famous Dassault, Thales, Siemens, IBM, Leonardo and Elettronica companies in particular the preliminary agreements have been reached to start scientific, research and educational programs in Armenia.

“They understand that if they want to work in our country for a long time, they will constantly need good specialists in Armenia,” President Sarkissian said. “We need to work on many things, need to work hard, need to work well, engaging the best.

First and foremost, we need to work in the area of education. Coming to Armenia, Dassault, Thales, and Leonardo must be confident that there are high-quality specialists. The ATOM project is all about that.” In this context the President said, “By focusing on Yerevan, we deprive the young people of good employment opportunities, deprive children of good education, deprive talented future scientists or artists, who live in Gyumri, Vanadzor, Sisian or Syunik and Artsakh, of the opportunity to express themselves.”

Urging to learn about the Fatherland also beyond Yerevan, President Armen Sarkissian spoke of Gyumri and said that to revive it doesn’t mean to construct apartment buildings. “Life should be brought back, and to do it we need to visit, to discover, to find, to assist, to engage,” the President of Armenia said.

“I was in Gyumri on Independence Day. I am really happy that by the decision of the government, this year we celebrated Independence Day out of Yerevan. The residents of Gyumri were glad that in the first half of the year the city received three times more visitors than during the whole last year. It means that the taken course is right. After that we need to think about Vanadzor, Kapan and Artsakh…It’s an ongoing process.

After my previous visit to Gyumri, a large group of Italian constructors arrived to Gyumri, then we sent our representatives. The plan is the following: to bring major Italian construction firms which have huge experience in the reconstruction of old buildings, to find financing mechanisms for the reconstruction of multiple sites in Gyumri. This is first of all a culture related to the reconstruction of old buildings which we don’t have even in Yerevan.” President Sarkissian said that many of the companies, which come to Armenia, didn’t know the location of our country.

“But they come, and it’s a result of hard and consistent work,” Armen Sarkissian underscored. “I am glad that even UNESCO sent its experts to Gyumri and a process has begun to make it a UNESCO protected city. We have to learn to value our assets.”