Tag Archives: Armenia

Billionaire buys Armenia’s electricity network

SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian utilities company Inter RAO sold Armenia’s electricity network for an undisclosed amount to the Moscow-based Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan. The deal has come as a surprise.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Veolia wants Armenian water

SEPT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Veolia, the French utilities company, is looking to extend its control of Armenia’s water and sewage systems, Gor Grigoryan, CEO of Yerevan Jur which is already managed by a Veolia subsidiary, said. Armenia is re-organising its water and sewage companies. Next year, Yerevan Jur will merge with the Armenian Water and Sewage Company. There are three other similar companies in Armenia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Armenian reserves fall

SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Currency reserves held by Armenia’s Central Bank have dropped to $1.646b from $1.703b at the start of the month, despite it insisting that it was not intervening in the currency market to support the dram. A year earlier, the CBank’s currency reserves measures $1.75b.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Remittances slow for Armenia

SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Remittances to Armenia from abroad dropped by 38.8% in the first eight months of the year to $114.8m compared to the same period in 2014 , the Armenian Central Bank said. Russia provides nearly 80% of all Armenia’s remittances. It has been coping with the fallout from a collapse in oil prices and sanctions.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Divisa Capital enters Armenia

OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — UK-based Divisa Capital bought Laboratory of Financial Technologies, an Armenian financial services provider, for an undisclosed amount. Mushegh Tovmasyan, CEO of Divisa Capital, said that he wanted to use the company’s new Armenian foothold to target the Eurasian market.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Armenian billionaire buys electricity network from Inter RAO

YEREVAN, SEPT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a surprise move, Russian state-owned electricity company Inter RAO sold the Armenian utility company Electric Networks of Armenia JSC (ENA) to Tashir Group, a Russian real estate holding owned by Armenian-born billionaire Samvel Karapetyan.

ENA is the 100% owner of Armenia’s electricity distribution network giving Mr Karapetyan major influence in his homeland where electricity has become a political issue. This year Forbes Russia ranked him as the 26th richest person in Russia with an estimated wealth of $4b.

The sale provides Inter RAO with an exit from Armenia where it had wanted to increase the price of electricity by 17% to make up for the drop in the value of the dram currency. This price increase angered people and thousands demonstrated in Yerevan, forcing the government to promise to subsidise prices.

Rumours that Inter RAO were looking for a buyer had been circulating since mid-September and had focused on Mr Karapetyan. He confirmed the deal in short statement.

“Tashir Group takes full responsibility for the management of the ENA,” he said.

Mr Karapetyan is the brother of Karen, a member of the Armenian parliament.

He immediately promised that his purchase of ENA would not mean that electricity price rises were back on the agenda.

“On a parity basis with the government of Armenia, the company will [compensate part of] the difference between tariffs before and after indexation on Aug. 1 2015,” he said.

And the deal had the backing of the Armenian government which wanted to reduce anti-Russia sentiment that had built up over the proposed electricity price rises. Russia is a key ally of Armenia.

Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan said: “Meeting with our request, within a short period of time Tashir group negotiated and signed a contract with Inter RAO for the purchase of energy assets, for which we express our gratitude.”

Details of the deal were not disclosed. Tashir Group has a high profile in Armenia. It owns around three dozen shopping malls, hotels and office blocks in Russia and Armenia, including one which houses 400 birds, reptile and amphibians.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

IMF raises Armenia’s 2015 GDP growth rate

SEPT. 26 2015, YEREVAN (The Conway Bulletin) — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its economic growth forecast for Armenia in 2015 to 2.5% from an earlier 1% projection, Mark Horton, the IMF mission chief to Armenia, told a news conference.

Although the upward revision of Armenia’s growth forecast will be welcomed by officials and will give the government some breathing space as it tries to navigate its way through an increasingly deep regional economic crisis, Mr Horton emphasised that the revision was due to a handful of one-off factors.

“Among the non-recurrent factors which will not happen next year are the launching of a copper factory, unprecedented favourable climate conditions and the good results from the agriculture sector,” he told journalists at a press conference.

Armenia’s agriculture ministry said earlier this month that the sector had grown by nearly 15% in the first seven months of the year compared to the same period in 2014. Also, a new copper mine that started operations at the end of 2014 has contributed to a 35% increase in overall metals and mining output.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Trade turnover drops in Armenia

SEPT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Trade turnover in Armenia dropped by over 5% in the first eight months of the year compared to the same period in 2014, media reported quoting the country’s statistics office. Media also reported that consumer prices had risen by 4.8%. Both indicators show the pressure that the Armenian economy is under.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Armenia wants to boost electricity sales to Iran

SEPT. 23 2015, YEREVAN (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia wants to increase by four-fold electricity exports to Iran, a senior government official said, highlighting the important regional economic position that the Iranian government will hold once international sanctions are lifted, as expected, later this year or next.

At a policy meeting in Yerevan, Areg Galstyan, the Armenian deputy minister for energy and natural resources said a third electricity transmission line to Iran was being built that would increase exports.

“Now in a year we export 1.8b kilowatt hours of energy to Iran and the capacity can be increased to 6.9b. kWh per year,” he said at a press conference. “We hope that the construction of a third Armenia-Iran high voltage electricity transmission line will be finished in 2018.”

The growing trade and diplomatic relationship between Armenia and Iran has become increasingly important for the government in Yerevan. It is short of regional allies. Armenia and Azerbaijan are still officially at war over the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh and its ties with Turkey have been broken over allegations of a genocide 100 years ago, meaning that it has turned to Iran as partner.

And with Iran on the brink of being accepted back into the international community after a deal with the United States and others over its nuclear weapons programme, relation – trade, diplomatic and cultural – are set to grow.

Armenia sees itself as a growing regional electricity exporter. As well as increasing exports to Iran it also wants to increase them to Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Group of men beat Armenian opposition activist

SEPT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A group of men dragged Smbat Hakobian, a member of an Armenian opposition group, away from a march and beat him, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. HRW said this was the 2nd time an opposition activist had been beaten in the past year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)