The Armenian government held a session recently headed by Prime Minister of Armenia Andranik Markaryan, who just returned from Dushambe. He was taking part in the CIS member countries’ government leaders’ session. The Armenian government’s session was rather effective. We’ll try and present to the reader the interesting resolutions. First, the government assigned the Minister of Energy to provide the 950 million AMD earned by the “Vorotan Hydroelectric complex” joint-stock company during 2006 to the “Hayastan” All-Armenian Fund in order to help the fund construct the fourth ropeway line in Tsakhkadzor. As far as we know, the “Hayastan” All-Armenian Fund functions with the donations it receives and not with help from the state. But what’s more interesting is that it was expected to reimburse the same amount of deposits that the government was talking about so much-1 billion AMD. It’s already clear that that amount is not going to be enough and have already made people understand that some citizens will receive their money next year. It turns out that the ropeway’s fourth line is much more important than the issues of the needy and elderly waiting to get their deposit reimbursements. While the “Hayastan” All-Armenian Fund collects donations through the means of a telethon each year aimed towards implementing road construction and other restoration projects in Karabagh, the Armenian government is providing 960 million drams for the construction of the 4th ropeway line.
Another interesting resolution made during the governmental session was the decision to provide 105 million drams from the government’s safe to the Ministry of Trade and Economic Development of Armenia. The ministry has to redeem the debt given by the “VEYA investment Limited” company. This Russian company has paid the accumulated sum of 250,000 dollars for Armenia’s membership in the United Institute for Nuclear Research from 2002-2003. Head of the science/technology department of the ministry Ashot Khandanyan informed “168 Hours” that Armenia could have been deprived of its right to take part in sessions due to its debts. According to Mr. Khandanyan, that institute plays a major role. Armenia is one of the founding members of the institute and there are more than 20 people from Armenia working there.
“We have redeemed the former debts during the past couple of years. The debt to “VEYA investment Limited” was the last one and we decided to redeem it too,” said Mr. Khandanyan.
But why did that company decide to do us a favor and give us the loan without any interest rate? A. Khandanyan had difficulty in stating a reason and considered that as more of a favor. He also said that perhaps the company did that based on the fact that there are many Armenians working for them. There were many resolutions made during the government session and all of them were interesting. But for some reason, the government considered the resolution for the country’s ecology as the most important. The press conference held after the session was dedicated to the issues concerning the “law about specially conserved ecological territories”, as well as re-cultivation (restoration) of lands. According to deputy minister of ecology, “they are writing nice clauses for the law” but there are no control mechanisms. For example, it is allowed to hunt “the karas fish” in the Sevan Lake, but you can also find “whitefish”, if it doesn’t exceed the entire 10% of fish. Who is going to count the “whitefish” and how? The deputy minister believes that they can’t do all that on their own and expect to get some help from police. The only thing left is for the police to agree on leaving everything aside and count fish.