The World Bank provided the Armenian government with a 16 million dollar credit loan for four years. With this amount, the “Saur” company was supposed to implement 18 projects. According to French director of the company Patrick Loren, two of the projects are underway, preparatory work is almost done for five projects, while 10 drafts will begin in a month. The most expensive project is the water supply and water circulation project in the city of Dilijan of Armenia, which costs 560 million AMD (approximately 1.5 million dollars). “The cheapest” is the project in Tsakhkadzor, which costs 115 million AMD. Besides that, the company has foreseen implementing projects with the profit that it makes. Nearly 100 small projects wroth 150 millon AMD (395,000 dollars) have been implemented. The USAID office also has some projects. If the French manager pulls off implementation of the projects during the course of the next four years, the WB wll give the right to work for another two years without participating in a contest.
“ArmWaterLine” joint-stock company is the largest water supply and water circulation company in Armenia’s regions and it has branches in 37 cities and 277 villages. Large cities such as Yerevan, Gyumri, Vanadzor, the Shirak, Lori and Armavir regions are out of the system. There is nearly 4,000 kilometers water pipeline in the system, a 4,500 kilometer pipeline running through the communities and 2,500 kilometer sewer, which last 40-50 years and haven’t been remodeled since the mid-1980s. The 16 million dollars was the first amount provided by the WB for the implementation of this project. Until then, the company went along with the collected money and the government’s subsidies. Currently, not a lot of money is flowing in and the debt of subscribers makes up 9 billion AMD, or 23.6 million dollars. According to P. Loren, the work done throughout the past one and a half year has increased the level of quality of their services. However, the losses make up 80%. The French manager wasn’t able to state how much less losses they have, if of course, there has been a shortage of losses. Just like the “Yervan Water” (YW) company purchased by the Italian “A-Utility” company, “ArmWaterLine” also preferred the installation of water meters. That’s why they fell behind schedule this year. They had foreseen installing 54,000 water meters in homes by the end of the year, but they were only able to install 26,000. There were some water meters that didn’t’ make it to the homes on time. There are water meters on sale in stores, but P. Loren prefers the imported water meters because “they are higher in quality.” The citizen of Armenia can now buy a water meter for 4,000 AMD, but the company offers water for 6,000 AMD. This is once again much like the “gasification” project of Yerevan, when in the beginning the company provided the citizens with the equipment for 8,000 AMD. At the time, people thought that the company or the managers were doing business with the water meters. It’s quite possible that the same thing is going on now. P. Loren recommended trying to understand the difficulties that the company is facing and not criticizing, especially the system is in a bad state and can be criticized.
Years ago, when the Yerevan water supply line was handed over to a private company, the Armenian government asked for a 30 million dollar credit loan from the WB and provided 5.5 million dollars on its own. At the time, former head of the Water Supply Committee Gagik Martirosyan said that that amount was too small and they needed another half a billion dollars for restoration. According to P. Loren, perhaps that amount is enough for restoring the water supply system of Yerevan, but they need double and even triple the amount of that in order to implement the water supply projects in the rest of the communities because the amount spent on supplying water for 10 village economies is the same amount spent for 100 municipal economies. It’s clear that there are not that many people living in the villages as in the city. There are villages in Armenia where the number of residents is equivalent to the number of people living in one apartment buildng in the city. It’s obvious that the amount of money spent for the restoration of the water supply for that small village will be 3-4, even 5-6 times more than the amount spent for the restoration for one building. From this point of view, the water supply and circulation in the regions is a bigger problem and much more money must be spent and a lot of time is needed. Only 16-17 million dollars won’t even solve 5% of the problems, especially since 7 million out of the 16 million dollar credit loan is the salary of the French manager for four years. What we’re left with is less than 9 million. What we Armenians don’t see is how the Armenian authorities look at this. We have touched upon the issue that Azeri businessman Parviz Nosrati owes 139 million AMD to “ArmWaterLine”. He purchased water pipelines for a couple of yeas and then only paid a part of the money. P. Loren told us that until now, they have tried to get the money back through negotiations, but they have failed. Now they have asked the Chief Prosecution of Armenia for help. Will the prosecutors help the company get back that money? Loren says that their company has done work worth that much this year alone. At the time, he told us that he had asked head of the Water Supply State Committee Andranik Andreasyan and Minister of Territorial Administration Hovik Abrahamyan for help. But it appears that these state officials weren’t able to lend him a helping hand, otherwise, it would be pretty hard for him to solve this issue on his own. Can you imagine a businessman from Iran come and “cheat” on an Armenian state-run company and have Armenian authorities remain silent? A month ago, 220 meters of the newly constructed water pipeline in Dilijan was stolen. Armenian presses wrote that general Levon Yeranosyan was behind all that. Director of the “ArmWaterLine” company’s north-east branch Rudik Avetisyan claims that 106 meters of the stolen pipelines were returned.
“I have talked with one of the thieves and he said that they would return another part in a couple of days,” said Mr. Avetisyan during a phone conversation but he didn’t say with whom he had talked to. “I talked on the phone, I don’t know who was talking with me. I just need to get those pipelines back. The rest is up to the police,” he said and hung up the phone.
There you have it-the poor-conditioned system and the pipelines of the Soviet Union are being sold and are not taken care of, and 1/3 of the money provided for restoration goes to some foreign businessman, while the debt remains a burden on the shoulders of the Armenian authorities, and so on and so forth. If things go at this rate, French businessman Patrick Loren can’t imagine seeing the water supply of Armenia’s regions reach the level of water supply of any French community.