Monday, December 20, 2021
Regulators Signal Rise In Electricity Prices
December 20, 2021
Armenia - A newly constructed electrical substation, October 24, 2019.
Utility regulators signaled on Monday plans to raise electricity prices in
Armenia by an average of 10 percent.
The Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) warned that the Armenian energy
sector will operate at an annual combined loss of 23.8 billion drams ($49
million) if the existing prices are not revised upwards.
In a statement, the PSRC cited the need to repay $270 million in loans used for
the recently completed modernization of the Metsamor nuclear plant. It also
pointed to Armenia’s contractual obligation to enable Russia’s Gazprom energy
giant to recoup investments made in a large thermal-power plant located in the
central town of Hrazdan.
The statement revealed that the Armenian and Russian governments have reached an
agreement that commits Yerevan to providing the Hrazdan plant with $31.8 million
annually for the next ten years. It said in that in exchange for this subsidy
Gazprom could keep the wholesale price of its natural gas for Armenia unchanged
at $165 per thousand cubic meters, which is well below the current international
levels.
The PSRC said the electricity tariffs should therefore rise by 4.7 drams (about
1 U.S. cent) per kilowatt/hour on average. The daytime price paid by most
Armenian households currently stands at almost 45 drams (9 cents) per
kilowatt/hour.
The regulatory body said the tariff would remain unchanged for low-income
families making up 11 percent of the population. They already pay significantly
less for electricity than other individual consumers.
The latter could see their electricity bills rise by between 3 and 7 percent
depending on the monthly amount of energy use, the PSRC statement said, adding
that the steepest price rise should be set for businesses.
The PSRC also indicated that the higher tariffs will likely come into force on
February 1. It said it will publicly discuss them with representatives of
Armenia’s key power plants and electricity distribution network as well as
consumer rights groups on Thursday.
The new energy tariffs and their knock-on effects could further push up the cost
of living in the country. According to government data, consumer price inflation
there rose to 9.6 percent in November, the highest rate in many years.
Pashinian Encouraged By Talks With Aliyev
December 20, 2021
• Tatevik Lazarian
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks at a meeting with senior
officials from the National Security Service, Yerevan, December 20, 2021.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian appeared satisfied on Monday with the results of
his most recent talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev mediated by Russia
and the European Union.
Aliyev and Pashinian held a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin in Sochi on November 26 before meeting twice in Brussels last week. The
Brussels talks were organized by European Council President Charles Michel and
French President Emmanuel Macron.
“I want to point out that after the meetings in Sochi and Brussels I see an
opportunity for us to move step by step along the path of opening an era of
peaceful development for our country and the region,” said Pashinian.
“At least the government of Armenia will do everything in its power to achieve
progress in this direction,” he told senior officials of the country’s National
Security Service (NSS).
Pashinian did not go into details of the talks. He said the NSS will have to
cope with more serious challenges “in this new environment” but did not
elaborate.
The first Aliyev-Pashinian meeting in Brussels lasted for than four hours.
Michel said afterwards that the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders pledged to
de-escalate tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and restore rail links
between the two South Caucasus. But he admitted that they failed to patch up
their differences on the status of a highway that would connect Azerbaijan to
its Nakhichevan exclave via Armenia’s southeastern Syunik province.
Speaking just a few hours before the December 14 meeting, Aliyev said people and
cargo passing through that “Zangezur corridor” must be exempt from Armenian
border controls. Pashinian swiftly rejected the demand, saying that it runs
counter to Armenian-Azerbaijani understandings reached with Russian mediation.
Aliyev described the talks as “productive” before meeting with Pashinian again
on December 15.
Yerevan Mayor Rounds On Ruling Party
December 20, 2021
• Harry Tamrazian
Armenia - Mayor Hayk Marutian inspects new buses purchased for Yerevan's public
transport system, February 5, 2021.
A spokesman for Yerevan’s embattled Mayor Hayk Marutian has hit out at Armenia’s
ruling Civil Contract party, saying that it wants to oust him because of his
popularity.
The party headed by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian officially announced on
Friday its decision to replace Marutian by one of his deputies. It controls at
least 54 seats in Yerevan’s 65-member municipal council empowered to appoint and
dismiss mayors.
The council is scheduled to vote on Wednesday on a motion of no confidence
proposed by its pro-government majority.
In a statement issued after a meeting with Pashinian held on Friday, the
majority leaders said that Marutian quit Civil Contract in December 2020 and is
not running the Armenian capital “with sufficient efficiency.”
Marutian’s spokesman, Hakob Karapetian, dismissed on Sunday the official
rationale for the bid to impeach him.
“Thanks to his three-year work Mayor Hayk Marutian has a quite high approval
ratings, and I think that one must look for reasons for this whole process
behind this fact,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Karapetian also accused council members loyal to Pashinian of sabotaging his
efforts to improve public transport. He said that they attempted last February
to block the purchase of hundreds of news buses for the city.
Some council members affiliated with the My Step bloc have openly disagreed with
the move to remove Marutian. Two of them, Grigor Yeritsian and Gayane Vartanian,
have resigned from the city council in protest.
Yeritsian said on Monday that the mayor’s relationship with Armenia’s political
leadership was “in tatters” even before the September 2020 outbreak of the war
in Nagorno-Karabakh. He said that following Armenia’s defeat in the war Marutian
did not publicize his decision to leave the ruling party at the request of
Pashinian’s entourage.
Marutian, 45, is a former TV comedian who actively participated in the “velvet
revolution” that brought Pashinian to power in May 2018. He was handpicked by
Pashinian to lead My Step’s list of candidates in the last municipal elections
held in September 2018 and won by the pro-government bloc.
More Armenian POWs Freed
December 20, 2021
Armenia - Toivo Klaar, the EU's special envoy to the South Caucasus, accompanies
Armenian soldiers flown from Baku to Yerevan,December19, 2021
Azerbaijan freed and repatriated at the weekend ten more Armenian soldiers
captured during deadly fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border that broke
out last month.
The soldiers were flown to Yerevan by a plane chartered by the European Union.
Toivo Klaar, the EU’s special representative to the South Caucasus, was also on
board.
The EU said their release was the result of an agreement reached by Armenian
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at their
December 14 meeting in Brussels hosted by European Council President Charles
Michel.
“An important humanitarian gesture follows the efforts by EU to work with both
countries to build on mutual trust,” it added in a statement.
Michel said after the Brussels talks that Aliyev and Pashinian pledged to
de-escalate tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and restore rail links
between the two South Caucasus states. Aliyev described the talks as
“productive.”
A total of three dozen Armenian soldiers were taken prisoner during the November
16 fighting on the border which left at least 13 troops from both sides dead.
Azerbaijan freed ten POWs on December 4.
A few days later, Armenian courts allowed the Investigative Committee to arrest
four of them on charges of violating “rules for performing military service.”
They will face between three and seven years in prison if convicted.
Armenian opposition figures and human rights lawyers criticized the arrests,
saying that Baku could exploit them to further delay the release of dozens of
other Armenian servicemen remaining in Azerbaijani captivity. Pashinian’s
political allies dismissed these warnings.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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