In the “Pressing” program Satik Seyranyan the guest is businessman-farmer, deputy candidate of “Strong Armenia” party Harutyun Mnatsakanyan is.

The main theses of the interview are below.

• Russia has its own distinct state policy. When Russia considered Armenia as a friend, it turned a blind eye to the phytosanitary problems of Armenia’s agricultural products, but now it does not. When you conduct your foreign policy in such a way that you don’t have its opposition, then you shouldn’t do it:

• 2018-2025 no matter how you look at the trade, Armenia is dependent on Russia in all directions. Armenia’s SATM does not work at all, our fruits and vegetables do not meet the standards, and it is not the farmer’s fault.

• It was necessary to predict this situation and not to make flowers the main export destination. You can’t get anything from the flower, it rots and you throw it away, you can’t make preserves or anything else from the flower… Now the rose producers throw it away or give it to supermarkets at very cheap prices. If even 5 million out of 96 million flowers are exported, that is only 5%. Our flower producers are not competitive in the European market. And today, the authorities put people in a desperate situation by their actions, when they present it as a victory of the state… I am amazed. Exporting another 15 million flowers with these 10 million euro subsidies will not solve any problem in Armenia.

• I fear another scenario. They can borrow 1 billion dollars in foreign debt, make compensations, and in the end, the Armenian people will pay that amount. What Nikoli did is not an anti-Russian policy, it is anti-Armenian. Nikol does not harm Russia, he harms us:

• This year, mulberries and greens were not exported at all, but the prices did not fall. The price of tomatoes has recently dropped. in networks it was 148 drams. And this means that the farmer gave the maximum for 80-90 drams. It is clear that the farmer is already working at a loss. If greenhouses fail, tomorrow we will eat either Turkish tomatoes or expensive tomatoes. It will be what happened to the egg market, when last year the price dropped to 10-12 drams, now the egg is 80-100 drams.

• More than 80% of the grain used in the field of animal husbandry is imported from Russia to Armenia. It is in the form of wheat, barley, corn, rye and other crops. In other words, our entire livestock sector, our daily bread comes from Russian wheat. Oil for our daily use, grains: peas, lentils, buckwheat, types of rice, oat flakes are imported from Russia in large volumes, vodkas are imported from Russia at a cheap price. Liquid gas, natural gas, diesel fuel, gasoline, etc. are imported from Russia. Even if we eat eggs today, we eat them at the expense of Russian wheat:

• Even Georgia, which considers Russia to be its enemy and was even at war with that state, did not stop its trade with Russia during the entire Russo-Georgian war. Now we are in a worse situation than Georgia. Russia has banned all our agricultural products. It’s a shame, don’t lie that our products will be exported to the European market. You also print a brochure like a primer on what a farmer should do. The farmer who exports food to Europe knows them very well, whoever has never exported, should not export.

• A carload of apricots was sent to France. As soon as the customs are cleared, they will say that we have entered the French market, but they have no idea what the real export is. And I am sorry that the population believes this:

• If this continues, price increases are inevitable for many products, because no diversification has been done for our economy, which is dependent on the Russian market. You should have a procurement station, laboratories accredited with Europe, you should have warehouses in Europe, you should have done analyses. You have done nothing, but you want to enter the European market. And for that, what did you, as the government, do?:

• They say that there will be an export of apricots to Poland, for how many days the government has been buzzing with news that, lo and behold, apricots will be exported to Poland… in fact, the government has no involvement, it has not done anything for this, the private sector has done it. The farmer did it exclusively through his connections. Davit Davtyan did the same, who exported asparagus to Singapore. The state has nothing to do with that either.

• I have seen wines in Europe that are cheaper than regular water. How will we enter the European market with our quality wines and cognacs, how will we compete with Spanish, French, Italian wines and other spirits? China imposed lower customs duties on Georgian wines than on Armenian wines. 

• Apricots do not enter America from Armenia, because the entry of Armenian apricots into the US is prohibited. embargoed: I don’t know why…

• The ban on the export of Armenian fish products to Russia is the most painful. The volume of the product is large, they will not be able to consume it domestically, it is not competitive abroad, they will not be able to sell it. If the ban lasts for 3-4 months, they can just wait, keep the fish in the ponds, and then see what happens. This is the only thing that our fish farmers can do at the moment.

• A grandfather selling a bucket of strawberries said: “Okay, but instead we are sovereign.” I mean, dear uncle, sovereignty is also about self-sufficiency, or what does trade have to do with sovereignty? The raw material of all tomato paste produced in Armenia is Persian. We don’t have enough tomatoes to produce tomatoes, what kind of sovereignty are you talking about?:

• You are the head of the state, first of all you have to maintain the presumption of innocence of a person. When people see the country’s No. 1 not keeping it, they don’t either.

• When you cut and distribute the skin of a pig slaughtered at home during an election campaign, don’t you think that you are spitting on the law of slaughterhouses you have adopted? You’re counter-advertising huh?:

• Drinkers, smokers and drivers will feel the consequences of the increase in excise taxes.

• I am more than sure that the CP has deliberately changed the traffic rules in Yerevan so that there are constant traffic jams in the city of Yerevan. Traffic in the city is absolutely paralyzed. This is done so that there will be no street fighting, the movement of people will be limited, and more people will use their transport system, which is working at a loss.:

• If our party decides to take the mandates and enter the parliament, we will not enter into that disgusting conversation with the CP, but, I repeat, it has not yet been decided whether we will take the mandate or not. If we take it, we will not use that disgusting speech.

• He is not a member of parliament or deputy president or president, you are a boy, do it, let’s talk as human beings… They, when they are in equal conditions, are zero. Yes, they are a figure of collective Alen Simonyan, who grabs a citizen’s wings with a bodyguard to spit on a person… And under equal conditions, the person on whom Alen Simonyan spat, that boy can take off the head of Alen Simonyan… 

• We have a trajectory, a biography, unlike Vahagn Aleksanyan and other CP members. Our biography is not 8 years old. We created our biography, not achieved it with the patronage of a famous person, as in KP. We will try to change the political culture in the National Assembly.

Details in the video.

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