“Yes, we do agree that there are still a lot of oligopolies and monopolies in Armenia,” Nienke Oomes, the resident representative of the International Monetary Fund in Yerevan, told RFE/RL in an interview. By this, she was trying to comment on the World Bank’s managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s view that the Armenian economy is dominated by monopolies and other “oligopolistic” structures seriously hampering the country’s development. “It’s a long process to go from a centrally planned Communist economy to a market economy,” she said. “Already a lot of progress has been made by Armenia. A lot of market mechanisms are now working in the economy. But there is a lot more to do.” “More competition is needed in a lot of sectors,” added Oomes. “A lot of sectors are dominated by one or two large companies that have a monopoly or oligopoly. So we fully agree with the World Bank that this is something that should deserve the highest attention of the government.” Let us recall that the Armenian government said it was committed to implementing such reforms. Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan has repeatedly said that better tax and customs administration is key to improving the country’s problematic business environment. “In the economy of the country there are oligopolies and low competition exists as well. We agree with this as well as with the roughness of elasticity of prices. This is a serious challenge for us,” said Sargsyan. And while the government is “elastically” fighting against this challenge the population of Armenia keeps feeling the influence of the activities of the oligopolies on their pockets. Only during several days the price of gasoline per liter grew by 20 AMD. Yesterday the gas stations have increased the gas price by another 10 AMD. And the sector of gasoline is a concrete example of the activities of oligopolies, the main players of which are Mikhail Baghdasarov and Barsegh Beglaryan, the closest oligarchs to the government and Tigran Sargsyan’s as well.
