Armenia's Technology Exports After 2022: A Regional Increase in a Sector That Is Still Unusually Large

Abstract

Armenia's recorded exports of information and communication technology (ICT) services rose from 382 million US dollars in 2021 to 1,051 million in 2022 and 1,775 million in 2025. The change coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Russian citizens after February 2022 and with the registration of more than three thousand Russian-founded companies in Armenia. This paper asks whether the higher exports persisted after that exceptional net inflow ended, and what comparing them with Armenia's other service exports and with neighbouring countries shows about where the activity sits. Working from Central Bank of Armenia balance-of-payments data, it reports two findings. First, the higher level held: growth stopped around late 2024, but exports in early 2026 were still roughly four and a half times their 2021 level, well after the net inflow had ended. Second, the increase was not distinctively Armenian. Georgia and Kazakhstan, which received the same relocation wave, recorded larger increases from 2019 to 2025, of 11.4 and 10.3 times against Armenia's 5.7 on World Bank figures and 6.8 on Central Bank figures. The sector's absolute size, however, remains unusual for a country of three million. Because trade statistics assign exports by where a firm is registered rather than where its staff work, the data cannot separate a genuine gain in Armenian capability from relocated firms continuing to bill through Armenia. The paper therefore sets out, in Section 7, a framework that sorts technology policy decisions by whether they hold up under both explanations.

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