Author: Tatoyan Vazgen

While the government rushes to increase pensions by 10,000 drams 3 months before the elections in order to bribe pensioners, inflation threatens to neutralize the effect of the increase in pensions. Recently, inflation in Armenia has become noticeably active. Due to a number of regional and internal factors, the potential risks of price increases have also increased.

For now, the Central Bank refrains from reacting to this situation and revising the refinancing rate. But if this continues, it will be impossible to avoid them.

Inflation activation was noticed in Armenia already at the beginning of the year. Twelve-month inflation rose to 3.8 percent in January from 3.3 percent last year. In February, the pace of price increases continued to accelerate, and compared to the same period of the previous year, 4.3 percent inflation was recorded.

The acceleration of inflation was dictated especially by food markets, where the rates of price increases are much higher. If at the end of last year, food inflation was 4.3 percent, in January of this year it became 5.9 percent, and in February it reached 6.5 percent.

Even if we do not take into account the fact that the prices of many types of food have risen at double-digit rates, this is already a serious alarm for consumer markets and consumers. We are talking about those citizens whose incomes are not expected to increase. In the conditions of activation of inflation and expansion of price increases, they have to spend more, if they have such an opportunity, or reduce consumer demand.

In both cases, it will be to the detriment of these groups of citizens, whose worries the political authorities are not ready to raise even the promised minimum wage.

In the past, pensioners were told to raise their pensions, no matter what they do, they don’t know how to spend the money, and now they say that raising the minimum wage is pointless, it won’t do anything. The question arises, if so, why did they include the “meaningless” promise of increasing the minimum wage in the government’s priorities?

It is clear that the purpose of such announcements is to avoid raising the minimum wage, as they once avoided raising pensions. Only after they saw that they were facing the fact of losing the votes of the pensioners, without grounds and justifications, they decided to hastily increase the pensions, creating problems for both this and future years of budgetary fiscal stability. But since the question of losing the power is raised, and keeping the power is the supreme goal of the CP members, they don’t care what dangers may arise in the future. That is why they hastened to increase pensions from April 1, simultaneously increasing the expected inflationary risks from that sector.

The increase in pensions will stimulate inflation, and the question is whether it will benefit or harm the pensioners more.

We are already seeing active inflationary manifestations in the market of many products.

Meat products have managed to increase in price by 8.2 percent in the last 1 year. Double-digit inflation has been registered, both in the case of beef, pork and lamb. According to official data, the price of beef increased by 12.5 percent, pork by 11.7 percent, and lamb by 13.3 percent. Inflation of fish products was 9.6 percent, dairy products exceeded 10 percent.

The price of eggs, in particular, has risen sharply, more than 19 percent compared to the previous year.

The inflation of oils and fats was 6.2 percent, the price of wheat rose by 6.4 percent, buckwheat by 10.1 percent, flour by 6.2 percent, and pasta by 8.6 percent.

Inflation of sweets, particularly chocolate, reached 10.6 percent in one year. Coffee has become more expensive by 8.7 percent, cocoa by more than 36 percent.

The inflation of fruits and many other products, as well as services, is also active.

And the consequences of all these price increases are borne by the consumers. Many, having no other options, are forced to cut costs, and the authorities are proud that they have improved people’s lives. They have improved their lives and increased their incomes at the expense of the state so much that they don’t even notice the price increases, they think that the life of an ordinary citizen has also improved.

The inflationary activity that we see recently threatens the pockets of many thousands of citizens who were barely able to support their own existence before. But that is not all. Not only inflation has intensified in Armenia, but also inflationary risks have increased, dictated especially by recent regional developments, in particular, by the Israeli-American attack on Iran. After that attack, logistical problems worsened. Cargo transportation through Iran has been mostly stopped or reduced. Carrying out cargo transportation by other roads is more expensive and time-consuming, which affects the prices of transported cargo.

It is known that Iran has already announced to completely stop the export of food and agricultural products from the country. Armenia is one of the consumption markets of some Iranian agricultural products. Moreover, they have not only consumer but also economic significance for Armenia. The production of dairy products, which is largely based on Iranian raw materials, is seriously dependent on Iran.

A number of other agricultural products, fruits and vegetables are also imported from Iran to Armenia, which are much more affordable. Stopping their import increases inflationary pressures and creates real risks of price increases in the domestic market.

Due to the regional situation, the inflationary risks coming to Armenia from other countries have also increased. Their effects may not be so visible for now, but the longer this regional instability continues, let alone military conflicts, the more the transmitted dangers will increase.

HAKOB KOCHARYAN

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“At the moment, all sociological indicators show that Pashinyan will not be re-elected in any way.”– 168TVof “Zara has a question” he mentioned during the program Aram Orbelyan, manager-partner of “Concern Dialog” law office, specialist in international law, lawyer.

In this context, he did not comment in great detail on a number of Nikol Pashinyan’s statements, including the Declaration of Independence, considering that changes to the Constitution will not take place with the logic that is being tried to be presented today, and if there is a need for any constitutional changes, then after June 7, the people will discuss and understand.

“They want to remove the reference to the declaration of independence only at the request of Azerbaijan”,- he remarked.

According to him, the Constitution can always be improved, but its greatest value is stability.

“What do we have since 2018, when the Constitution came into force?” They changed the Constitution in order to capture the Constitutional Court in 2020, the rating system was removed, the Constitution has very clear guarantees that were clearly violated, and if we come to the point that we need to change the text so that this violation does not happen, it will become that we are saying that they did well that they are violating it.

The Constitution guarantees the apolitical nature of the Chief of the General Staff, he was elected by the National Assembly. What did they do? They said, “No, how will it be? I am the commander-in-chief. I cannot change the Chief of the General Staff. They changed the law and made him a deputy minister. Then the Constitutional Court instead said, “You know, there is a problem of separation of powers. What are you poking your nose at?” He said, “How can I not do it?” What happened to the NSS, a body subordinate to the Prime Minister? What is happening with the budget…” he added.

The international law specialist responded to the observation that the CC has recently been very synchronous with the authorities, and that the latest decision was made a few days ago, by which, in fact, the Constitutional Court decided that the laws adopted in an urgent manner regarding the ERC correspond to the Constitution, and to the question of whether there is a possibility to challenge it in some way, to return to this:

“For the sake of justice, we must claim that the Constitutional Court historically has not opposed the current authorities very clearly, which is logical. the problem here is not only political. in any case, the powers of the Constitutional Court, as a balancer, are somewhat restricted by the existing political-social situation.

There are several extremely obvious problematic issues in the HEC episode, at least a fundamental issue that concerns the return, that is, before the laws are changed, after the license is revoked, they apply and get a license again, the conditions may be a little different, a different investment program is discussed, etc. They said, “No, you can’t, you have to sell.”

What fate awaits HEC, we asked the interlocutor, reminding us that the interim manager, who entered HEC for the sake of the Republic of Armenia, announced that the process of nationalization of 100% of shares of HEC has entered the stage of regulation of recognition of public overriding interest.

“The biggest problem is that it is not his job, his job is (if we look at it from the point of view of the law) that the law should have ensured that the HEC successfully overcomes this crisis, if there was a crisis and the goal was to overcome the crisis.

In my opinion, some decisions will be made regarding the National Economic and Social Committee in a short time, these decisions will not have any consequences, because, as I mentioned, we will have a different reality on the 8th of the month.”

In his observations about TRIPP, the specialist is skeptical, taking into account the regional reality and the inconsistency of the statements.

“The investment is very good, do it, but it is very important that this investment does not suddenly turn out tomorrow that the translator made a wrong translation and it was not about the investment, but the expenses. we saw on Public Television how the wording “Armenia will receive something worth 9 billion from America” ​​turned into that America will invest 9 billion in Armenia,” said Orbelyan.

According to him, today there is a real agenda, and we see discussions with a real agenda. those discussions will lead to the fact that there must be a change on the 8th of the month, otherwise we can go to a deep dictatorship.

When going to a deeper dictatorship, the people who will help in this matter should think that those who did it in the previous 7-8 years are facing criminal responsibility today: high-ranking police officers, high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defense. Some of the officials of Artsakh, who brought people to his rallies, left him alone in captivity in Azerbaijan and forbade them to speak. We are talking about Araik Harutyunyan.

I expect, by the way, that there will be a different result of the elections on the 7th, and I expect that on the 8th or 9th, a significant number of KP deputies will understand that they should express no confidence. It does not mean that we should underestimate the elections, we should consider the importance of the elections. the voter is the people, the people should vote, but on the 8th of the month there should be distrust.”

In other words, is the impeachment agenda realistic, we asked Aram Orbelyan, he answered: “It is not only realistic, but also mandatory, even more important if the elections are successful is.

CP deputies should understand that they will be destroyed. It will just destroy. his formulation “if I am not the prime minister, Armenia will not have a prime minister” is fixed for him, it always remains so.

What will happen before the 8th, what wrongdoing will happen, how will the criminal justice system be used to achieve this, we will see, but I expect that the people will not let their vote be taken away from them this time.»։

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