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Government Decision N 730-L is the foundational sector-governance instrument for Armenia's mining sector through 2035. It was adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers on 11 May 2023, published in the official Armenian legal database on 12 May 2023, and entered into force on 13 May 2023. The decision was prepared over several years with World Bank technical assistance via the Armenia Strategic Mineral Sector Sustainability Assessment programme and constitutes the first comprehensive national mining strategy since independence.
The strategy operates through three structurally defined goals:
Goal 1 — Unified digital geological information database. Replaces the legacy Soviet-era paper-archive geological-information system at the Geological Fund of Armenia with a centralised national digital platform covering exploration data, subsoil-use licences, and production records. The absence of a unified digital database had been the primary impediment to attracting new exploration investment and conducting systematic resource assessments, particularly for critical minerals (antimony, REE, copper, molybdenum) in under-surveyed eastern and southern regions.
Goal 2 — Effective decision-making framework for subsoil use and nature protection. Integrates the responsibilities of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure (MTAD), the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry of Economy under a coordinated planning architecture. The goal addresses regulatory fragmentation between the Mining Committee under MTAD (licensing authority), the State Committee of Real Estate Cadastre (land-use), and the Ministry of Environment (EIA and tailings oversight) — a historically significant deterrent to timely project development and enforcement consistency.
Goal 3 — Compliance with international standards. Aligns the Armenian regulatory framework with EITI (Armenia has been an EITI member since 2017 and was EITI-compliant as of 2019), IRMA (Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance), ICMM Principles, and the emerging EU Critical Raw Materials Act due-diligence requirements applicable to Armenian export flows into the EU single market.
The Action Plan attaches ten deliverables running through 2035: 1. National geological data digitisation and platform build-out 2. Subsoil-use licensing simplification and fast-track exploration permits 3. Environmental impact assessment architecture reform 4. Tailings-management regulatory upgrade (predecessor to the 2026-01-19 tailings policy) 5. Artisanal-and-small-scale-mining (ASM) formalisation and closure of informal operations 6. Mining-revenue allocation framework (exploration of a sovereign mining fund) 7. Community engagement and benefit-sharing standardisation 8. Human-capital development and mining-sector vocational training 9. Transparency, anti-corruption, and EITI reporting enhancement 10. Results framework and monitoring indicators (MTAD to establish within 3 months of adoption)
The decision mandates that "necessary expenses for implementing measures shall be addressed during annual budgetary planning cycles," with each responsible agency obligated to ensure financial provisions in their budget submissions.
Amendment — Decision N 1246-L (8 August 2024): Modifies budgeting-procedure provisions for strategy implementation measures. The amendment adjusts the fiscal-planning process for action-plan deliverables without changing the strategy content or targets.
the parent-statute anchor for future Armenian mining-policy actions in the responds_to graph (e.g., the subsequently filed 2025-07-31-armenia-export-promotion-strategy-2025-2030 builds on the mining-sector governance baseline created here).
producers globally; the strategy's licensing-simplification and geological-data goals directly support ZCMC capacity-expansion planning and potential critical-minerals offtake agreements with EU and US partners.
was developed partly in response to the 2018-2023 Amulsar force-majeure dispute, where environmental-review fragmentation contributed to a 5-year project suspension costing ~USD 200m. An August 2023 Lydian Armenia–Government MOU resumed the project under revised environmental terms ($250mn financing + 12.5% state-equity stake).
Partnership Charter and associated critical-minerals discussions explicitly target Armenian antimony and REE deposits as US defence-industrial-base diversification sources away from China; Decision 730-L's geological-database and licensing objectives are prerequisites for the foreign-investment mobilisation the Partnership envisions.
The strategy is the single most material non-financial sector policy instrument in Armenia's macro-policy framework.
subsoil-use instrument through 2035, analogously to Kazakhstan's Subsoil Code (No. 125-VI, December 2017) as parent statute for the Kazakhstan critical-minerals cluster.
was confirmed in the arlis.am document record but a direct URL for the amending decision was not located during research; an updated arlis.am entry for the parent decision will eventually surface it.
3 months of adoption (by ~August 2023). Publication of that framework on mtad.am has not been confirmed.
subsequent decree establishing such a fund has been filed in the register.