Baku. Shamil Alibeyli – APA. When the fighting began in Syria, some of the country's Syrian Armenians began to head to Armenia, but as the fighting has intensified so has the number of those looking to their ancestral homeland. Now, Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan says there are about 7,000 Syrian Armenians in Armenia and that many are losing hope of ever going back, APA reports quoting “Voice of America”.
Sargsyan said most the refugees are from Syria's commercial hub of Aleppo: "Recently we met with Syrian Armenians at the Armenian president’s office. Many Syrian Armenians are interested in moving their businesses to Armenia."
​​ Some left in a hurry, grabbing only a handful of items. Others packed as much as they could carry, traveling in convoys for several days, through northern Syria and Turkey to get to the Armenian border.
"The challenges in front of us are helping them in transferring finances, moving equipment, getting bank credit and assistance in working in Armenia," he said.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has promised the Syrian Armenians his government will do whatever it can to help them for as long as necessary.
Still, as the flow of refugees grows, so does the strain on Armenia's resources.
The International Monetary Fund's most recent outlook - October 2012 - put Armenia's unemployment rate at 19 percent, forecasting the jobless rate will remain above 17 percent at least through 2017. And even with the economy slowly gaining steam following a dramatic drop during the financial crisis, the World Bank says poverty remains a problem.
According to the World Bank, more than 12 percent of Armenia's economy depends on remittances. Some of those payments came from the diaspora community in Syria.
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