YEREVAN - Armenia's industrial output and net exports registered a record-high growth in the first ten months of the year and will continue to expand robustly, a senior government official announced on Friday.

Ashot Shahnazarian, the deputy minister of trade and industry, said the volume of industrial production was 22 percent higher from the same period last year, while the rise in exports hit 47 percent. The upswing has already translated into 14,000 new jobs in the industrial sector, he said. Shahnazarian attributed the "encouraging" figures to increased foreign investments and the gradual restoration of traditional links with enterprises in Russia and other former Soviet republics.

Armenia's metallurgical and chemical industries, tightly integrated into the Soviet economy, bore the brunt of the virtual economic collapse of the early 1990s and are still reeling from its efforts. Some of them, including the Kanaker Aluminum Plant in Yerevan and the chemical complex in the northern Vanadzor city, have started to pick up due to renewed investments from Russia.

Shahnazarian said the government expects the struggling industrial sector to produce 15,000 new jobs next year. But he cautioned that despite the positive trend, economic recovery is still a long way off, with unemployment remaining extremely high and the average wage in the sector extremely low.

President Robert Kocharian said last week that the economic situation will improve considerably in the course of 2001 and that its benefits will be felt by ordinary Armenians by next May.

The government anticipates a sharp rise in foreign investments and financial injections from international credit institutions.