As estimated by economist Ashot Yeghiazaryan, the effective fight against monopoly implies a large economic space and a large number of players. But according to him, we are not dealing with monopolies in Armenia in a classical sense. “We are dealing with the government resources centralized entities, who having a power in the markets are able to dictate rules,” – said the economist to Aravot.am. Mr. Yeghiazaryan does not agree with Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan’s observation that the “monopoly is not always bad, it depends on its nature whether it is natural or not. If it is natural and is in the competitive field rather than at the expense of administrative resources, then it is a different thing.”
As observed by the economist, “The problem is not in the fact that the monopoly is artificial or natural but in the fact of how to redistribute the economic power to be able to ensure development and diversity.” Mr. Yeghiazaryan is convinced that in a country with primitive economy, it is impossible to fight effectively against monopolies, “It would be possible if Armenia were a part of a greater economic space, I mean the EU’s common economic area, and were able to develop the export-oriented economic model, in that case, we would have numerous exporters who would compete in a big economic field, would be considered productive companies, and all this would bring diversity in Armenia’s economic environment. This also implies ensuring free competition, in other words, the rules of the external game that would make our exporting entities effective would shape also an internal economic environment, the rules of this game would transfer to the economic environment too. In that case, we could say that we can implement a free competition policy. Since Armenia is deprived of building an economy of such model, given Armenia’s restrictions on economic policy, I mean the fact that we have ceded with the EaEU commitments, I think, the fight against monopolies may have a bit of imitating nature.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
