Epress.am News from Armenia
Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper writes that competent authorities are conducting assessments and calculations to determine whether Armenian Defense Ministry's potato suppliers are reaping super-profits after several dozen potato farmers from the town of Vardenis in Armenia's Gegharkunik province and nearby villages blocked the Vardenis-Karvachar road late last week to demand that authorities review this year's wholesale prices of potato.
The Ministry of Defense is Armenia's main consumer of potatoes; potato farmers claim that they sell their produce to the ministry's suppliers at 40-45 drams per kilogram; meanwhile, the ministry buys it from the suppliers for 80-104 drams.
According to the paper, agriculture minister Ignati Arakelyan recently went to meet the farmers and urged them to wait for a couple of days “until competent government agencies conclude their probe and find out what's really going on.”
“[Arakelyan] told us that suppliers insist they are forced to pay such low prices to reduce expenses. They claim that they spend too much on storing, sorting, putting the produce in sacks and delivering it to military units. We informed the minister that that is not true; [the suppliers] load the potatoes into their trucks right at our warehouses and drive them to the units. The minister wrote this down and told us to wait 2-3 days while authorities are carrying out their calculations. He promised that the issue would be resolved because he agreed that selling potatoes at 40 drams is absurd,” farmer Rafayel Melikyan told the newspaper.