ARKA News Agency has been operating since May 1, 1996. Its professional credo is reliability, accuracy and efficiency. In 2012 the agency started developing a new project –Finstore.am. ARKA Director Konstantin Petrosov spoke about its perspectives and opportunities to Review business magazine
Launched years ago, ARKA has grown into some universal holding. What are the main products at ARKA’s arsenal?
– ARKA delivers economic and financial news, and it has been functioning at the market for 17 years withstanding the severe competition. We have been always monitoring the market and trying to offer our customers high-demand media products. Our vision was to build a media holding, therefore we have been introducing new products all the time. Today, ARKA manages such projects as ARKA Telecom and Armbanks.am portals, MediaGid.am news aggregator, AdNet.am single ad network. This year we decided to launch another unique product –Finstore.am business information e-shop.
Could you describe this product, please.
— Finstore.am is a database of Armenian enterprises and companies, allowing to analyze the market and assess the investment attractiveness of different sectors of the Armenian economy. Finstore.am is a platform, which presents the profiles of companies, the scope and type of their activity, information on their products and services, the number of employees, and the structure of the owners. It also has other data, such as financial reports, including analytical and financial factors showing the dynamics of growth, earnings, capitalization, liquidity and profitability of companies. The database allows anyone to explore the business environment of Armenia, get to better know customers and monitor the status of business competitors. Finstore.am is a long-term project that will be constantly improved and expanded. In the future, we plan to include “Foreign capital in Armenia” sector to the database, which will present the detailed information about non-resident companies. the project’s success will largely depend on the companies themselves, because they should be willing to provide detailed information on their activities since it is themselves that will benefit from this platform, which will be the real proof of their complete transparency and desire to attract investment.
We believe this project will encourage the Armenian companies to make their information more open. We included to our database the companies which are required to publish their financial reports. But we hope some other structures will also join our database in the near future.
What motivated you to initiate such project?
– Today it is too difficult to collect information about enterprises and make an analysis in Armenia. Such kind of statistics is almost absent. We strongly believe the project will carry some positive effects to the market. Information should be open so as the competition can be healthy and efficient. Openness of information will also give a positive impetus to institutional investors.
What sources are you going to use for Finstore.am and who will be analyzing the data?
– The main source we will be using is statistics of Armenia’s major taxpayers and printed publications of companies’ official financial reports. Moreover, we will also use web sites, newsletters and some other information in media sources. The data analysis will be conducted by our specialists as well as the specialists of those companies which will order our information. All the results of such analysis will be available on Finstore.am.
Who is the main target audience of Finstore.am?
-We think, the main customers of Finstore.am will be potential investors who wish to assess the business atmosphere in the republic and get familiar with the enterprises of their interest. The customers will also be banks, credit and insurance organizations that should reveal creditworthiness and risks of companies. International rating organizations and some other interested individuals can also become our clients. Our product might be also interesting for students, experts, etc. —0-
