Armenian leather and footwear industries face oblivion
According to local reports, around 18 Armenian shoe factories employing some 35.000 workers are operating under the threat of closure.
The factories, which once supplied shoes for a quarter of the former Soviet Union’s population, have recently been privatised. However, the switch from public to private ownership is widely thought to have been thoughtlessly carried out, with the result tha the sector looks likely to disappear in its entirety.
The same scenario faces the Armenian leather industry, although here most tanneries are closing because of a shortage of local raw materials. All the big slaughterhouses have closed, depriving the country of fresh and properly treated hides and skins. The old, Soviet system of buying fresh hides through "Potrebsoyuz" (consumer co-operative unions) disappeared when Armenia declared independence, and was never replaced by a new system of hide collection.
