More than a hundred angry farmers in Armenia’s wine-growing Ararat region rallied late yesterday to protest against a sharp cut in the cost of grapes which they said is planned by wine and brandy companies. The protesters, who own vineyards in more than a dozen local villages, threatened to block a major highway leading to Yerevan as they demonstrated outside the main government building in the regional capital Artashat. The protest followed rumors that at least one of the wine distilleries has decided to cut the purchasing price to 80 drams (20 U.S. cents) per kilogram from last fall’s level of 110-140 drams. As of September 22 only the Yerevan-based wine company has told him that the company will buy 15 tons of grape from him for 80 drams per kilogram despite a supply contract that set the price at 130 drams. Agriculture Minister Gerasim Alaverdyan acknowledged that the wine-growers’ concerns are not unfounded as he arrived in Artashat for urgent talks with regional administration officials and told them that the issue will be solved by tomorrow. At the first sight it seems that there is no problem and that these are private companies; so the price of the distilled grape is determined by competition and that neither the government nor any businessman should be blamed in this. This would be so in a normal free economy. Here in Armenia as in all the other sectors in the winery sector as well no accidental person can own a wine company. Almost all the wineries belong to pro-government businessmen. So in this case if they cared about the farmers they would just order to distill with the preliminarily set price. Indeed the government can oppose this that they cannot impose anybody any price because it contradicts the principles of free market. But we can remember the time when during the tense political period, the opposition rallies the government would artificially press on the businessmen not to increase the prices of stapled goods so that the number of complainers is not added by new protesters. The best evidence of that was the artificial maintenance of the USD rate. The exchange points of Armenia had a clear order not to raise the USD cost. So now we have comparably more peaceful times. The ANC is quieter and has given the floor to other political forces and the government allows its oligarchs to do whatever they wish till the next rally perhaps.
