The growth of the electric power tariffs will be followed by hiking of prices for other goods. And in the present social and economic conditions in Armenia, this will result in the new cycle of the public displeasure, the head of Armenia's Union of Commodity Producers, Vazgen Safaryan, said at today's press-conference.
He said that in any social state the authorities have been conducting the policy of decreasing of tariffs for services so that to raise competitive ability of the produced goods. But in Armenia everything is the opposite. "The volumes of the consumed electric power in the country reduces year by year. In particular, it reduced by 4% in 2013 versus 2012", - Safaryan said.
He think that the formal reasons of the growth of the electric power tariffs, i.e.the financial difficulties of the power generating companies are groundless. He is confident that the population should not pay for these companies to succeed. "The statement that growth of the power tariffs is targeted at covering of the 20 billion "gap" of the "Electrical Networks of Armenia" sounds not convincing, as there are other ways of removal of this "gap". Moreover, we think that 150 small power plants functioning today should be also effectively used. It is necessary to gradually reduce the share of the electric power generated at Razdan Thermal Power Plant, which is too expensive", - Safaryan said.
He also offered to build the second line of the Yerevan Thermal Power Plant.