The ‘’Dark” Sides Of The Goum Market

Mrs. Tsaghik makes coffee for 50 drams a cup for the resellers in
the Goum market. She pays 1200 drams daily for the space that she
occupies and rumor has it that she pays an extra 200 drams for
supervision of the kitchen. She avoided talking with me, her new
“colleague”, about her work. She gets to pay the daily rent and take
some money home by making the coffee. Along with the smell of hot
coffee that permeates through the air, Tsaghik’s song is also heard by
everyone. Some of her colleagues accompany her:

And the other for God to watch over us”

Mrs. Mariam works right next to Tsaghik. She sells lemons. On that day
at noon she had only sold two lemons and she was sad because she had to
pay 1000 drams for her space. There was 30 drams left for one lemon.
But during the second half of the day, for the first time in her life,
she sold 70 lemons all at once for 150 drams a lemon. Words could not
express the joy that Mariam felt. She had hope that she would have
enough money to pay the rental space and take some money home. “My son
is dead and someone has to keep my orphan grandchildren. The lemons are
sold better outside the market, but my daughter-in-law is ashamed of
standing outside.” The lemon sellers standing in front of Mrs. Mariam
sell better than her. “They know how to do their job. They have
customers who always buy lemons from them, people from restaurants come
there and take large quantities of lemons. I am an old woman and this
is all I can do. I get 10-20 dram from each lemon. How much can you
sell one by one to get some money?”

“After the remodeling, they say that they will do away with the outside
market and make the inside part 3000 drams daily. This will help pay
the expenses. How can we continue standing, how much can we sell so
that we can get some profit out of it?” complains the fruit seller from
the outside market.

A little bit of math

The Goum #2 market in Yerevan is considered to be an expensive market.
The residents of the Central district do their shopping here. Shopping
is done outside near the market too at cheaper prices. The rental for
one area at the inside market is 1600 drams a day of which 1200 is for
the counter and 400 drams for a scale and night rental. One area
measures to be 80-90 centimeters of a table. The area does not satisfy
all the sellers. Many occupy one and a half or two spaces (1 meter
60-80 centimeters) and pay 2400 drams or 1800. Another 400 drams added
makes up the reseller’s one day rental. The inspectors give a receipt
only for receiving the 1200 drams and the money for the scale and night
rental is just collected. It is not that cheap for the outside market
(500-2500 drams) and this depends on how much area you occupy. The
villagers pay 500 drams for bringing their products to the market. The
resellers work on one side of the market, and the villagers on the
other. Both the reseller and the consumer have to pay in order to enter
the “tent market”. The loader, or as the merchants like to call it, the
“kaskchin”, charges 50 drams for transferring each box or bag of
products to the market. The cart can carry 10-20 items of products.
They say that the “kashkchin” works 10,000 drams a day. He pays a
certain amount (we did not find out how much) to Surik-their “brigade
leader”. Another “brigade of kashkchins” work outside with the same
prices but they have nothing to do with the market. “Their brigadier is
a different person-a thin old man. He comes every day, collects his
money and goes. The loads outside are his,” say the loaders but they do
not go further in detail about who gets how much for each cart. “We do
not know. It doesn’t matter to us.” The work done by the loaders did
not matter to the owner of the market either, but it had a little to do
with math. “They charge 50 drams for one cart. What money can we get
from them?” The shoe fair, which is on higher ground, divides the
reseller and the villager into two. According to Mr. Karapetyan, at the
shoe fair the workers pay 300-400 drams for one place. We found out
from the owner that the daily rent is 1000 drams, another 1000 at the
end of the week for electricity and other expenses. There were nearly
200 counter tables in the marketplace. Almost all the resellers were
working at the same pace. It was very hard to count how many workers
there were standing outside or “inside”. Mr. Karapetyan pointed out
that 30,000-90,000 drams is made each day. It is most probably through
this money that the taxes are collected. No matter how much we may want
to believe the estimated calculations of Mr. Karapetyan, in reality the
numbers look different. Approximately 1,000,000 dram rent is collected
daily at the Goum market. This happens if the market is going through
remodeling and/or does one third of its job.

Who are the owners?

This year, district chief of the Central District Gagik Beglaryan has
bought the Goum Market from Gagik Tsarukyan and is currently remodeling
it. “We plan on creating a market corresponding to European standards,”
says owner Arsen Karapetyan. They have destructed the market’s
neighboring kiosks, and they are restoring the vacated area as a
parking space. There will most definitely be valet parking. The owners
of the market are giving the kiosk owners the chance to occupy one
pavilion in the market being built with rental fee. However, there will
be no compensation for the destructed kiosks. A separate area is being
constructed for the wholesale trade with villagers. “The closed market
will be only during the day. Commerce is flowing from the “Yerevan”
cinema until the street where there is a sign “Meshok Papi” (Grandpa
with the Bag). There is a plan to move that trade to the market,” says
the owner. If the person is selling something to the police officer of
some district council representative, then that person will pay the
district chief. The residents have organized commerce in the yards of
the homes neighboring the market. According to Gagik Beglaryan’s
project, those yard markets will also be eliminated. Basically, the
villagers selling products from the village have to pay the Central
District Chief Gagik Beglaryan. “We work 2000 drams a day. That 2000
drams is gone with the wind. The inspector just took it and went. As
you can see, the small booth which was destroyed left the workers
unemployed. But the new owner does not care. Doesn’t this mean that he
stole the market from us? Doing something to make it look pretty is
good, but it will not satisfy all your needs. If you want to enjoy
something, that doesn’t mean you have to go around depriving others,”
says a resident of one of the private homes.

Is there a secret in commerce, or just a big shade?

“168 hours” weekly could not share the preoccupations of the residents
and the sellers of the market with owner Gagik Beglaryan. He was always
busy and owner Arsen Karapetyan was not competent to answer all
questions. Many of our questions remained unanswered. For example, the
question of why the fees for night and scale are not taken into
account-it would be interesting to know how much tax the market had
paid in September and other “market” orientated questions. In such
cases, there is a ready answer for that: “Commerce is a secret”. “We
always wish that the boss doesn’t raise my salary or else we will have
to pay taxes. I will not pay, that is his problem. But if we think
about that a little more, we will see that it is all through our
efforts. They fill their pockets with the money from the government and
the people,” explains one of the sellers. As stated in the previous
article, we clarified that the corresponding governmental structures
still remain quiet. They are involved in privatizing and the rest is up
to the owner. Suddenly, we had some kind of fear; “either the market is
an object of significant importance or it is just a shady circulation.