“Of course, prices can go high, but the economic process must be proportionate. In other words, if people salaries are rising, if generally there is an economic activeness, yes, of course there might be some price rise in some service. But a lot more unhealthy economic process happens in Armenia, the meaning of which is to provide enrichment of the officials possessing monopoly illegally on the account of fair and ordinary people,”- so commented ANC leader Levon Zurabyan, in the interview with Aravot.am regarding the mini bus fare increase. He noted that the authorities, without any competition, simply using their economic and political leverage, never suffer. “They can say that the gas price went high, but no one says that you knew for 10 years that Armenia’s economy is dependent on Russian gas, why did not you create an alternative energy in 10 years.
You know, this is the most dangerous thing. In other words, due to its own corruption, incompetency, to bring the situation to a level, where there are no other solutions besides price increase, and then say that we had no way not to increase the price. But you could conduct completely different policy in 10 years.” Levon Zurabyan assured that they absolutely do not believe in any promises of this government, also the promises that the price increase of the fare in AMD 50 will lead to increase of the quality of service. “It is natural that if they intend to rise, they will need to bring all kinds of reasons for that. They were saying the same thing about the gas, the main justification is that it is necessary to make investments. It is an ordinary thing, we are tired of the same justifications for 10 years. The problem is that in our country we need to build our economy on free competition, in which hundreds of thousands of people will participate. So that people will be able to open businesses, develop their business. In this case, everyone will be solvent. If any part of the business increases the price of services, the remainder must be raised proportionately. If this process is a market process, i.e. full equality of the competition, in this case, few people will suffer from it, more likely to suffer people who are trying to gain some advantages, purely due to being close to the authority. However, today, this mechanism is broken, there is no opportunity for competition. This is the essence of these bandit authorities.”
