Today in the scope of Women’s Entrepreneurship Development programme the Republican Union of Employers of Armenia /RUEA/ and Orange Foundation launched the third and final stage of roundtable discussions on “Women entrepreneurs to develop stronger and more competitive business”. The first satage of roundtable discussions was participated by women entrepreneurs representing small and medium-size businesses, such as marketing, diverse services, handicraft, trade, private employment agencies, etc. The second and third stages of discussions were participated by beginner women entrepreneurs who in the scope of these discussions met with specialists of different business domains to acquire knowledge of tax legislation, marketing skills, written or unwritten rules of business with their help. In addition, roundtable discussions will give them the chance to exchange experience with more experienced business women engaged in small and medium-size businesses. “As a business environment, business, first of all supposes knowledge of relevant laws and certain rules. When taking the first steps in business and then during organization and implementation of business processes beginner entrepreneurs always face problems that relate to organization of PRs or advertising, marketing and market orientation policy. For many business women this side of business is yet undiscovered and uninvestigated and thus many related fundamental problems give rise to the necessity of acquiring relevant knowledge of this domain,” said Gagik Makaryan, President of the RUEA. “As a corporate foundation of a company the role of which as an economic actor is important for the country, we wish to support small and medium-size business actors and help them to act and feel confident in taking the first steps in their business that requires diverse knowledge and skills. We all know that for sustainable development of Armenia the role of small and medium-size businesses is of great importance and engagement of women in this domain is a big plus. With love we support this initiative and hope for tangible results,” said Nazareth Seferian, General Secretary of Orange Foundation. In the scope of this initiative the Agency for Small and Medium-Size Business Support will help the women who will present a good business plan to get sponsored. According to the statistics of 2010 there are 540.4 thousand women employees in Armenia. 69.2% of them are engaged in private sector (mostly in agriculture and processing industry), 27.8% - in state sector (education, health, social services) as well as in community and public sectors. 27.5% of business women are private entrepreneurs and only 0.001% are employers.

---