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    Categories: 2020

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 04/23/2020

                                        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.

 


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