According to the Armenian Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan, the government of Armenia will sign a 250,000,000-dollar contract with Lydian Armenia. This company holds the rights to operate the Amulsar gold mine. Kerobyan made this announcement at the Parliamentary Committee on Economic Affairs meeting. 

The agreement is a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding among the Armenian government, the Eurasian Development Bank, and Lydian Armenia. The company will provide the Armenian government with 12.5% of its shares in exchange for the right to run the mine.

Kerobyan stated that the mine would create hundreds of jobs and increase Armenia's GDP by one percent. He said Lydian Armenia would offer $7 million in relief to impacted communities at the mine site, situated on the border of the southern Armenian regions of Vayots Dzor and Syunik. 

Environmentalists and locals in the mine’s immediate vicinity have been fighting against the deposit's exploitation for several years. In 2018, the investigative committee of Armenia began a probe on suspicion of causing harm to the environment. The government asked the Lebanese firm ELARD (Earth link & Advanced Resources Development) to send an international expert team which later concluded in its environmental impact assessment that the development of the Amulsar project does not contain “unmanaged risks” for the environment.

The decision to operate the Amulsar mine was slammed by environmentalists and civil society representatives demanding a new environmental impact assessment and whose concerns over the risks persisted for years. 

Some experts even expressed concern that Fitch and Moody's ratings downgraded the Eurasian Development Bank due to the risks caused by Russia's war in Ukraine. This implies that in the case of the deepening of the Ukraine war, the Eurasian Development Bank might come under sanctions as Russia owns a majority stake in the bank.