EcoLur
On the fourth day of the mass sit-in against rise in electricity price Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan reacted to the situation at the governmental meeting.
“Such style won’t bring any success, so I suggest being constructive: the government is willing to discuss any question raised by them. They violate the Constitution by closing one of the central streets and abusing citizens’ rights to free movement. I’m calling the citizens to come back to the constructive filed and to discuss all problems together…”
• The first reason is lack of water: the electricity produced by our hydropower plants is much cheaper than the production of the thermal power plants. For example, the electricity produced by HPP fluctuates from 2 to 24 AMD, while the electricity produced by Hrazdan TPP costs 40 AMD. It’s clear, when the electricity not produced by the hydropower plants has to be replaced by the electricity produced by thermal power plants, which causes additional expenses.
• The second reason is not-planned rehabilitation of the nuclear power plant in December 2013, which lasted 88 days. It was again replaced with the electricity produced by the thermal power plant, which costs as much as 6.5 times more expensive, which also caused additional expenses.
• The third main reason is the depreciation of the national currency by 20% within the recent three years, which naturally impacted on the cost unit of the produced electricity.
We can’t consider the option of wide-scale subsiding, which can be sued only for targeted groups – socially insecure groups. On the agenda today we have the draft resolution on the support to these groups.
If damage is not compensated, the company will continue not paying the producing stations, and, as a result, will have a chain reaction, which will have irreversible consequences on the economy. Power cut-offs will turn into a regular thing.
Our calculations show that the average additional expense for each family in case of electricity price increase will make up around 1400 AMD, as each family, on average, spends around 200 kW electricity per month. For this reason we consulted with the President and drafted a resolution, which will add the allowances aimed at increase in the standard of living by annually 24,000 AMD for around 105,000 insecure families or around 400,000 people. Thus, the government will allot over 2.5 billon AMD to mitigate the consequences of increasing electricity price for insecure layers.
June 25, 2015 at 13:43