Freedom instead of security

09/04/2006

The president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan announced yesterday that from now on citizens would pay for gas at a 10-15% gas price increase. But he didn’t go further in detail about the concrete arrangements and discussed issues with the Russian party. On the basis of what the president said we can assume what particularly Armenia gives. For this purpose we have to only list his ideas: 1. the Government has found solutions to resist this increase, 2. the Government has found resources (i.e. money) to compensate this increase, 3. Russia will make investments in the fifth block of the Hrazdan electric station and will modernize it, 4. This will go on for another three years. We can make only one assumption: the fifth bloc of the Hrazdan electric station has been given to Russia and the price it has been given for it will enable us to keep the prices for gas between 65-69 dollars. Let’s recall that the government was not in favor of this just several months ago.