Eurasian Economic Commission receives 33 digital economy projects

MOSCOW. KAZINFORM Digital Initiatives Office of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) has already received 33 digital economy projects. Six are of very high quality. Some have already been approved by the EEC Board, Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Tigran Sargsyan said at the Eurasian Week forum in Yerevan, BelTA learned from the press service of the commission.

Tigran Sargsyan stressed that the EEC is interested in a dialogue with the business community. Without public-private partnerships it will be impossible to implement effective digital agenda. According to him, there are at least two approaches to digital transformation. The first one implies that major Eurasian companies scale up their achievements across the Eurasian Economic Union. The second approach involves participation all of the EAEU countries in implementation of the digital initiatives approved by the EEC, with each state having its own specialization. This will enable the countries to build up certain digital competences. “The discussion with business will show which approach will be more preferable,” Tigran Sargsyan said.

Among the issues raised at the forum was the idea to set up digital consortiums. Karine Minasyan, Eurasian Economic Commission Member of the Board (Minister) for Domestic Markets, Informatization, Information and Communication Technologies, spoke about the principles on which such consortiums might operate. They may include the principles of economic feasibility, manufacturability, national sovereignty, neutrality, integrity. “Given these principles I suggest we explore what models we can use. Each of our countries has mechanisms of public-private partnership. But this is a very complex mechanism for dynamic digital projects. I am sure that various partnership models can work better as part of the digital agenda. We need to use the ‘sandbox' for piloting different models. We must discuss whether these projects may involve supranational partners or all states. On the other hand, we need to consider uniting efforts to create a single platform of states and business. The union has five states and we need to build a system of interaction,” the minister said.