Russian official links Armenia’s EU path to economic risks

PanARMENIAN.Net - Alexey Shevtsov, Deputy Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, has stated that Armenia may be forced to find an additional $1 billion to pay for natural gas.

According to him, Armenia currently purchases gas at a price of $177.5 per 1,000 cubic meters, Vesti.ru reports.

“As we discussed in our first interview, the exchange-traded price is around $600 and could reach $800. Considering that Armenia receives 2.3 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia, a simple calculation shows that Armenia would need to find roughly an additional $1 billion, and possibly even more,” Shevtsov said.

In his view, deeper integration with Europe could expose Armenia to demographic and economic challenges and could lead to a scenario similar to developments seen in Ukraine.

He outlined his forecast of what could happen if Armenia introduces a visa-free regime with the European Union.

“When a visa-free regime is introduced, if we look at what happened in countries such as Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria, their populations declined by about 15 percent after joining the EU. In Moldova, that figure reached 25 percent. The most capable, young and promising segment of the population left. Those who remained were largely older citizens who, first of all, place an additional burden on pension systems and social infrastructure.

In addition, the outflow of the working-age population does not produce any positive consequences for the economy. Overall, this could result in a direct GDP loss of around 23 to 25 percent. Both Vladimir Putin and, more recently, Alexander Lukashenko have said that Armenia is essentially repeating Ukraine’s experience of 2013–2014. Serious thought should be given to ensuring that what happened in Ukraine is not repeated,” Shevtsov said.

Earlier, Sergey Tsivilev, Russia’s energy minister, advised Armenia to try replacing Russian gas with European supplies and see what results such a move would produce.