“I think the deal that we made is a good one”, said the RA prime minister in the RA National Academy of Sciences yesterday regarding the fifth bloc of Hrazdan, “We haven’t given the fifth bloc with the purpose of making the gas price down, the price is still the same: it is $110. This was just a good opportunity for us. We got an opportunity to give more reimbursement to our citizens”.
-As we know usually, in case of such deals, the party selling something gets money. As for this one, Russia gives only 60 million out of its 250 million. So this means that they have made barter: the fifth bloc against gas. In this case it is not important what kind of definitions they have for it. The fifth bloc has already been sold and it is clear to us that the authorities are now trying to pretend that this deal is very good for us. The prime minister has already found an explanation for this. “We made our production more competitive”, assures Andranik Margaryan, “In our neighboring countries, as a result of this increase, the net prices of goods and services were also increased. We managed to compensate this increase and keep our production at a higher level than that of other CIS countries”.
Of course this method of making the production competitive is amazing. So do they mean that they are providing 180 million dollars from the state budget so as not to let our production fall down and citizens starve? So how are we going to keep our production competitive in three years? Do they want to keep our economic growth stable and consisting of two numbers and then blowing it after the coming elections, thus making Armenia depend on Russia?
Armenia has been doing its best not to give the fifth bloc of Hrazdan and the Iran-Armenia pipeline to Russia since autumn. But the recent developments prove that our authorities still aren’t able to counterbalance the decisions of Russia. This was also seen during the speech of the president when he was informing people about this agreement with Russia.
However, there are many shady things in this deal that we don’t understand. First of all people still don’t know whether the Iran-Armenia pipeline has been given to Russia or not. Our officials fully deny this rumor, as for the Russians, they deny it partly. Recently “Gazprom” company appended information in their web page, where they wrote that some gas field units had also been given to it along with the fifth bloc of Hrazdan. Probably the reason why our authorities don’t inform this to people is that they haven’t found any solutions yet how to present this as a good deal for us. The same announcement also states that after this agreement “Gazprom” company will also hold the controlling share of “ArmRusGazard” (ARG) company founding capital. As we know 45% of the ARG stocks belong to the RA Government, 45% – to the Russian Government, and the rest 10% – to “Itera” company. It is said that “Itera” company belongs to “Gazprom”. The Governmental resolution states that the RA Government is to make a contract on selling the fifth bloc of Hrazdan to the (buyer) Russian “Gazprom” company or a legal entity founded by it in the territory of Armenia. This means that the fifth bloc will be given either to the ARG or to another company founded by it in Armenia. As for the details, neither the RA Government wants to say anything, nor the ARG.
The founding capital of ARG company covers $280 million, 45% or $126 million out of which is the share of the RA Government, the share of “Gazprom” is that much too, and the share of “Itera” covers $28 million. The fifth bloc of Hrazdan was sold for $250 million. If this unit is given to the ARG, it means that the founding capital will be increased and will become $530 million. If nothing changes, the RA Government will hold 45% of its share as well as a part of the fifth bloc included in it. But the Russians would hardly agree with this. Recently the Russian “Comersant” newspaper wrote that after this deal the share of “Gazprom” in ARG would cover 82%. But it is not clear yet what kind of share our Government has after this deal.
Yesterday the RA prime minister said that after selling the fifth energetic bloc of Hrazdan to “Gazprom” the energetic security level of Armenia would be increased, as well as its competitiveness would go up. According to the contract, the Russians have to make $140 million investment in the fifth bloc. But as we know the companies given to Russia on the basis of “property against debt” agreement are no longer in effect, so they may fail to make this work too. But of course they may make some investments in it and strengthen its capacity because it may bring good profit for them.