JULY 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Remittances to Armenia in the first half of the year were down 33% to $408m, the Central Bank said. This is consistent with other countries in the south Caucasus which are struggling to cope with the fall out from a recession in Russia and a drop in oil prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s military ordered a readiness check of its units stations in Armenia, the AFP news agency reported. The military garrison stationed in Armenia is one of Russia’s largest overseas deployments.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prices in Armenia have been dropping since January, its official statistics agency said. It said that overall inflation in June measured a 5.5% increase from the same month one year earlier. A drop in food prices has slowed inflation, the Central Bank said in a statement.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — Demonstrators in central Yerevan shifted their rally against an electricity price rise on Monday after police cleared barricades from the central street they had occupied for two weeks.
A Bulletin correspondent said around 1,000 people gathered at Freedom Square in the centre of Yerevan for another protest on Thursday evening. Police watched the protest but the atmosphere was calm.
“We demand one thing. The immediate and complete cancellation of the decision adopted by the State regulatory commission on baseless rise of electricity tariffs,” one of the protesters said.
Thousands of people have been protesting in the evenings in the centre of Yerevan, demanding that the government scrap the plan to raise the price of electricity, the third price rise in two years. The Russian-owned electricity company says the hike is necessary to support the power grid.
A state regulatory commission has already approved the price rise but in an apparent concession to the protesters earlier this month Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan ordered an audit of the electricity company.
And, on Wednesday, an Armenian state watchdog fined the electricity company $126,000 for violating the rights of consumers for demanding residents in new-built housing pay up front for their electricity.
The protests have widespread support even though the numbers have been dwindling.
“I’m very busy and that’s why I can’t take part in the protests,” said Georgi Barseghyan, a Yerevan resident. “So are other members of my family. But we all are with them.”
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — Several hundred protesters continued to occupy a main street in central Yerevan, demonstrating against an electricity price increase.
The number of demonstrators has fallen and a Bulletin correspondent said there were now no more than about 1,000 people protesting on July 2, a drop from an estimated 10,000 protesters last week.
But the stand-off with riot police is still one of the most widely supported street demonstrations in Armenia for years.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, also warned the West against interfering, a sign of the Kremlin’s concern.
The protesters, who are mainly young, have defied police warnings to quit and the atmosphere has veered from tense to party-like over the past week. Last week police used water cannons and detained over 200 protesters when they tried to clear the square.
In a bid to appease the protesters, Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan suggested inves- tigating further a request by the Russia-owned electricity monopoly to find out just why the price increases are needed.
“I strongly believe that cancelling the tariff increase is extremely dangerous. Hence, until the given company pro- vides its opinion, the govern- ment will incur the entire burden of the tariff increase,” Mr Sargsyan said.
Most activists, though, dismissed Mr Sargsyan’s offer as a distraction.
“Increasing electricity tariffs will increase nearly all prices. Bread, butter, oil,” one activist at the protest said.
The electricity price rise is the third in two years.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s foreign currency reserves increased by $100m in May, the Central Bank told media. The increase shows that pressure on the dram has reduced. Last year, the Central Bank spent a third of its reserves defining the dram.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia has given Armenia a $200m loan to buy Russian-made weapons for its military, media reported quoting Ara Nazaryan, the Armenian deputy defence minister. Russia is Armenia’s closest ally in the region. It is still officially at war with Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia said one of its soldiers had been killed in a shootout with Azerbaijan around the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh. Armenia and Azerbaijan sporadically clash around Nagorno-Karabakh where a shaky 1994 ceasefire maintains a fragile peace.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s parliament approved a plan to sell off the government owned Post Office. Armenia needs to update and modernise its Post Office which has 3,000 employees and 250 branches across the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 21-25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — In an often tense standoff with police, thousands of people demonstrated in Yerevan this week against electricity price rises.
A Bulletin correspondent estimated that the protest had swelled to around 8,000 people by Thursday evening, the biggest anti-government demonstration in Armenia for a generation and one that could pose a serious threat to the authorities.
On Tuesday, the second day of the protest, police fired water cannons and detained more than 200 people as they tried to clear Freedom Square in the centre of the city. The assault, though, just appeared to strengthen protesters’ resolve.
“Our demand remains the same and we will not leave Baghramyan Avenue until the illegal decision on electricity price hike will not be annulled,” said Aram Manukyan, an activist.
Hundreds of protesters have camped out overnight since and called for the 17% electricity price rise to be repealed.
This is the third price rise in two years. RAO UES, the Russian company that owns Armenia’s electricity network, said it needed to increase prices because of the fall in the value of the Armenian dram which makes imports expensive.
The price raises are particularly painful because Armenia, like other countries in the region, is having to deal with a drop in its economic prospects.
Protesters had started to gather in central Yerevan on Monday, June 22, in anticipation of parliament approving the electricity price rise two days later.
The next day, police turned their water cannons against the demonstrators and waded into the crowd, detaining people trying to stage a sit-in.
Since then, the crowds of protesters have swelled but been peaceful.
PM Hovik Abrahamyan said that the protests were misguided.
“Blocking one of the major prospects in the city will not lead to any success. I call on the activists to get back to constructive dialogue,” he said.
In 2008, eight people died in Yerevan when soldiers fired on anti-government demonstrators.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
