The most serious economic expectation continues to be the inflation and devaluation of the AMD. The Armenian media almost every day raise their concerns about the increase of prices of various goods – cigarettes, sugar and so on. On the other hand, the USD rate approached the threshold of 400 AMD – the psychological threshold. After overcoming this figure the dollar rate might go even higher. We wouldn’t say that this was unexpected. The last parliamentary elections were the most expensive in the history of Armenia. According to expert-level calculations, a part of these businessmen-MPs running as single mandate candidates have spent legendary amounts. They speak about 1-2,5 million dollars. And the outflow of these amounts may create certain shakes in our economy. If we take into account that election bribes were offered for proportional ballots then we can confidently say that the immense amount of money has made our economy uncontrollable. According to the last official statistics during the last month the monetary circulation of cash has been added by 35 billion AMD (88,5 million USD). Therefore, the election bribes offered by our “politicians” continue their destructive effects – the economic shadow. As it’s known the electoral bribes were offered in drams. It means that a party of our “politicians” exchanged their currency and channeled this money in cash transactions with the famous formula of “money for votes.” The money that appeared in the hands of the population was sent to the market. It means that it returned to the ones who offered bribes. The big businesses, importers and producers, were indeed looking for big profits. Now, when the people have more money as a result of bribes, the businessmen should increase the price of goods – especially the prices of stapled goods by having the objective to retrieve their money. This system has worked this way during the previous elections and will perhaps be the same after the next elections as well. But parliamentary elections have another peculiarity in Armenia. Presidential elections follow them in approximately 10 months. And this becomes certain restraining tool for the government. The government that is reproduced election after election is trying to maximally mitigate the situation. It is not a secret that our oligarchs have divided the market amongst each other. They have divided it sector by sector and even product by product. Now only the most presumption oligarchs would dare to increase the prices of the goods they produce because the state elite is preparing for the presidential elections with a fresh sway, which means that anything done involuntarily will be precluded and punished. We can clearly say that in the upcoming ten months there will be no price increase of bills for us – neither for water, nor gas. The leaders of these sectors will stay in the lair till the elections are over. They will wait till February 2013. They will have three and a half years to increase their service fees. In fact the question why the government doesn’t fight against the increase of prices now is really rhetoric. We all know that in a few months the oligarchs, businessmen will get to the patriotic initiative of financing the presidential elections. Want it or not, they will have to be involved in the process. The periodic reproduction of the political system is matter of war or peace. By doing so, they protect our business sector from possible turbulence and cracks. And for that they need to be financially prepared. First they need to retrieve their money as soon as they can by increasing the prices. The contemporary election history shows that in our country elections become more expensive. And we don’t mean the publication of luxury posters or booklets; neither do we mean the organization of shows with participation of the so called big or small Armenian “celebrities.” Now the prices of vote buying have increased (the previous 5000 is already a history). So did the social segment. The expert-level calculations have been proved by the official details to a certain extent (the cash transactions during the last month have been increased by 88,5 million USD, as you remember). The forecasts of the past two months that the elections would cost 100 million USD weren’t too far from the reality. Now the only objective of the government is to make the process of retrieval of these funds as obscure as possible. This is a process that cannot be hidden. Ultimately, this money will be retrieved by raising the prices of commodities. No matter how the official statistics will try to present minimum rates of deflation, nonetheless the average citizen will feel this inflation on his/her skin every single day. Thus, it is true that there will be time for everything. There is the time of taking bribes and there is the time of giving the bribes back. Let’s hope it will proceed without turbulence.
