The Irony behind President’s Promises at Yerkrapah Congress

On February 18, at the 11th congress of Union of Yerkrapah Veterans, President Serzh Sargsyan addressing the parliamentary elections due in April, announced that the Republican Party will not make false pre-election campaign promises.

Now, let’s take a look at Serzh Sargsyan’s promises made on the previous, 10th Yerkrapah congress.

Nairit

At Yerkrapah 10th Congress in 2014, referring to the economic situation, Serzh Sargsyan said that Armenia has entered the certainty field and that they have clear agendas. One of the projects presented was the construction of a new Nairit plant and rehabilitation of the old one.

“If some provocators stop misleading Nairit workers, we will most likely this year, regardless of anything,  start building a new Nairit, or at least commence design and estimate works. Preliminary agreements are already reached and the operation of the plant is a possibility”,- Sargsyan said.

3 years later and no trace of a newly built Nairit in Armenia whatsoever. Moreover, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, days after his appointment, was quick to declare that there is no plan to relaunch the old Nairit, and the state is not going to deal with this business.

Moreover, recently the plant officially started the liquidation process.

New factories

The second unfulfilled promise was to build a large copper smelter. “At the end of 2014 we will complete a project in the mining industry that will produce 80-100 thousand tons of copper concentrate – the critical number required for having a large copper smelter, which in turn is possible only with a sulfuric acid recovery plant,” – Sargsyan had announced.

Note that 300 thousand tons of copper concentrate (28% of the concentrate is copper) is needed to produce 80 thousand tons of copper. In 2014 Armenia produced 192 thousand tons of copper concentrate, and 316 thousand tons in 2015, which exceeds Sargsyan’s mentioned critical amount.

Subsurface consumption also increased in 2016, but no copper smelter or sulfuric acid refining plant were built in Armenia.

And More

Add that if in 2014 Armenia’s GDP was US $ 11.6 billion, then in 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund, it was reduced to US $10.7 billion.

Armenia’s foreign reserves have decreased as well. If in 2014 they amounted to an average of  1.8 billion dollars, according to the Central Bank, the figure is less than 1.7 billion now.

In other words, it turns out that despite Serzh Sargsyan insisting at the Yerkrapah Congress that he will not make impracticable promises, by an ironic coincidence, his promises made at the previous Yerkrapah Congress have not been kept.