RFE/RL Armenian Report – 12/20/2021

                                        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.


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