In these days, the population so to say is in panic. People are spending all of their savings on purchasing food products. The reason is not the New Year holidays. In a number of city shops, one get the impression from the purchase that as if we are in the Soviet years when people were doing shopping by kilos and boxes. “Aravot” visiting some shops witnessed people buying several bottles of vegetable oil, a few kilos of sugar, rice, buckwheat, pasta, boxes of canned food and other products.
In the conversation with us, citizens were saying that everything is getting expensive day by day, and, with a fear that by the end of the month and in the beginning of next year, inflation will be higher, today, they are storing the food of first necessity by large quantities. “They say that there will be a terrible price increases since January, therefore, it’s better to buy more now so that at least for some time we would use food bought cheaper as compared to the next year. They say that after accession to the Customs Union, there would be a sharp increase in prices “on the whole””, said one of active shopping doing citizens in an interview with us. Another customer doing shopping in one of the Yerevan stores said that she had spent all the amount sent by her son from Russia on buying food, “What he sent, I converted into drams, it’s true, dram has no value anymore, but if we buy in this way and store at home, we would survive at least for a few months, we would not buy anything too expensive. We buy things that that are not perishable and can be on the shelf for a few months. What else can we do? A “catastrophic” rise is expected, everything is talking about it, all the TV channels are broadcasting that an unprecedented rise will be recorded in the coming year. Look, we could see it, everything has already become high in price, and dram has become a dirt cheap, if it goes so, the salary would be enough only for bread.”
Economist Ashot Yeghiazaryan noted, “Wait for the worse.” In the result of dollar rise, the citizens who have loans in dollars suffer the most, though their incomes and wages are in drams. Months ago, these borrowers were repaying the interest of the loan received by cheap dollar at a higher cost of the previously calculated amount. The Central Bank (CB), yesterday, urged to refrain from foreign currency speculations, unnecessary conversions, because in the event of such variable behavior of the exchange contain high risks and instead of expected benefit, they can lead to significant losses. Yesterday, the bank continued stopping the sale of the dollar for a few hours during the day, and when they began selling, they sold it at 440-450 AMD per dollar.
The CB assured that these phenomena are short-term in nature, and has expressed its willingness to stabilize the situation in the market. “The banks probably have expectations that the price can be changed, they insure themselves against further problems, and possibly they could have some deficiency in dollars. Dollar remittances are down, investments are reduced, as well as the declines in the Russian market, this is the simplest reason for the dollar deficit. Small amount of dollar enter the Republic,” said Ashot Yeghiazaryan. Note that the difference between the buying and selling of the dollar, at different hours, ranges from 5 to 15 drams. For example, buying in some banks ranges from 435 up to 439 drams per dollar, and the selling ranges from 440 to 450 drams per dollar.
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Nelly BABAYAN
