Thursday, Yerevan Disagrees With Russian Criticism • Naira Bulghadarian Armenia -- Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian at a news conference in Yerevan, March 30, 2020. Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian on Thursday insisted that Russian natural gas has never been as cheap for Armenia as was claimed by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and that Yerevan is right to seek a reduction in its current price. “I agree that during some periods the gas price at the border has been below international levels but I cannot share Mr. Lavrov’s view that it was ever two or three times lower than the market-based price,” he said in written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian service. Lavrov dismissed on Tuesday complaints that European Union member states are now paying less for Russian gas than Armenia and Belarus because of the collapse in international oil prices. He argued that that unlike EU consumers, the two ex-Soviet states allied to Russia buy Russian gas at fixed prices that had been set well below international market-based levels. “When the existing price for Armenia and Belarus was two or three times lower than the international price this was taken for granted and nobody said that it’s politics,” he said, adding that both countries should honor their “contractual obligations.” Grigorian insisted that the Armenian government is not seeking to take advantage of the crumbling oil prices that are hitting the Russian economy hard. He claimed that Yerevan recently asked the Gazprom giant to cut the price of gas delivered to Armenia primarily because the Russians wanted to raise it. Gazprom raised its wholesale price for Armenia from $150 to $165 per thousand cubic meters in January 2019. Nevertheless the cost of gas supplied to Armenian households and businesses has remained unchanged since then. Armenia’s Gazprom-owned gas distribution network has incurred additional losses as a result. Last month it asked the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) to allow a roughly 11 percent rise in its retail prices. Lavrov also said that internal gas prices set by Armenian utility regulators make it harder for Gazprom to agree to a deeper discount. In the context of the gas issue, the Russian minister also criticized ongoing criminal investigations into major Russian companies operating in Armenia. He singled out the Armenian railway network managed by the Russia Railways (RZD) giant. Grigorian dismissed that criticism, saying that the Armenian authorities cannot allow any company to operate “beyond the law.” “On this issue we have a mutual understanding with our Russian partners at the highest political level,” he added without elaborating. An Armenian law-enforcement agency raided the Yerevan offices of the network called South Caucasus Railway (SRC) and confiscated company documents in August 2018. The Investigative Committee alleged afterwards that SRC inflated the volume of its capital investments by 400 million drams ($830,000). Both SRC and its Russian operator denied any wrongdoing. Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Vladimir Tokarev said last September that the criminal investigation has effectively disrupted RZD’s operations in Armenia. A spokeswoman for the Investigative Committee said on Thursday it has still not charged anyone as part of the continuing probe. Nor have the investigators identified any concrete suspects in the case, she said. Investigators indicted several SRC employees in a separate probe which was completed recently. The latter are accused of embezzling a total of 8 million drams ($16,600). In late 2018, law-enforcement authorities also launched a fraud inquiry into Gazprom’s Armenian subsidiary. They have not indicted any senior executives of the gas operator either. Armenian Genocide Commemorations Scaled Back Due To Coronavirus • Marine Khachatrian Armenia -- People walk to the Tsitsernakabert memorial in Yerevan during an annual commemoration of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, April 24, 2019. Citing a coronavirus-related state of emergency, the Armenian government has banned people from visiting a hilltop memorial in Yerevan on Friday to mark the 105th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Huge crowds have for decades marched on April 24 to the Tsitsernakabert memorial to some 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire massacred or starved to death during the First World War. The government decided to cancel the annual daylong procession because of the coronavirus pandemic which has killed 24 people and infected about 1,500 others in Armenia. It said that only the country’s top political and spiritual leaders will lay flowers at Tsitsernakabert this time around. Officials will then place 105,000 flowers around the eternal fire of the memorial overlooking the city center. According to Deputy Minister of Education and Culture Ara Khzmalian, this will be followed by live performances by Armenian artists to be broadcast live on the night from Saturday to Sunday. Armenia - People visit the Tsitsernakabert memorial in Yerevan to mark the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, 24Apr2017. It was also decided that street lights will be switched off and churches across the country will toll their bells at 9 p.m. on Thursday. In addition, the government urged Armenians to turn the lights off in their homes and to light mobile phone flashlights by their windows at the same time. All roads leading to Tsitsernakabert and entrances to the memorial were already blocked by police on Thursday afternoon. They will remain closed until Saturday night. People randomly interviewed on the streets of Yerevan welcomed the authorities’ decision to scale back this year’s genocide remembrance ceremonies. “If there is a danger [of spreading coronavirus] then we must avoid that danger because we have had enough casualties and must not suffer more,” said one woman. Government Expects 2% Drop In Armenia’s GDP • Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia -- A cable car at the empty ski resort of Tsaghkadzor, March 15, 2020. Armenia’s government on Thursday forecast that the domestic economy will shrink by 2 percent this year due to the coronavirus pandemic and announced plans to borrow more than $500 million to cushion the impact of the recession. Speaking at a cabinet meeting in Yerevan, Finance Minister Atom Janjughazian argued that the global health crisis has caused a major drop in international prices of copper, one of the court’s main exports, shut down the Armenian tourism sector and will cut multimillion-dollar remittances from Armenians working abroad. Janjughazian said that this necessitates a revision of the government’s spending and revenue targets for year which were based on an economic growth rate of at least 4.9 percent projected for this year. He said the 2020 state budget should be amended to take account of 150 billion drams ($310 million) in coronavirus-related relief measures planned by the government and a shortfall in tax revenues which will likely total 170 billion drams. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s cabinet approved corresponding changes in its budget proposed by the Ministry of Finance. The changes also have to be approved by the Armenian parliament. Janjughazian estimated that the government needs about 260 billion drams ($540 million) in “additional financial resources,” presumably foreign loans, in order to meet its revised budgetary targets. Armenia’s public debt should therefore reach a level equivalent to 60 percent of GDP by the end of this year, he said. Armenia -- Finance Minister Atom Janjughazian speaks at a cabinet meeting, Yerevan, . According to Janjughazian, the aggregate debt stood at almost $7.3 billion as of last month. The minister did not specify the sources of extra borrowing planned by the government. The authorities in Yerevan can use a $248 million “stand-by arrangement” approved by the International Monetary Fund in May 2019. The IMF said at the time that the three-year lending program will be launched in case of “unforeseen economic shocks.” In its World Economic Outlook released last week, the IMF forecast a 1.5 percent drop in Armenia’s GDP in 2020. It cautioned that this is a “baseline scenario” which assumes that the pandemic will fade in the second half of 2020. The Armenian economy grew by 7.6 percent last year and continued to expand robustly in the first two months of this year. However, the situation changed dramatically in March as the government put the country under lockdown to fight against coronavirus. The month-long lockdown has involved the temporary closure of most nonessential businesses. The government allowed construction companies as well as manufacturers of construction materials and cigarettes to resume their work on April 13. Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian said on Thursday that the government will also allow other sectors of the economy to resume work if the spread of the virus remains “manageable.” But he gave no time frames for their reopening. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2020 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.