{"id":266037,"date":"2015-06-19T15:15:40","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T11:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=266037"},"modified":"2015-06-19T15:19:35","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T11:19:35","slug":"armenian-parliament-approves-bill-to-privatize-national-postal-operator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2015\/06\/19\/armenian-parliament-approves-bill-to-privatize-national-postal-operator.html","title":{"rendered":"Armenian Parliament Approves Bill to Privatize National Postal Operator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">The Armenian National Assembly approved on Friday, June 19, a bill submitted by the RA government on privatizing &ldquo;Haypost,&rdquo; national postal operator of Armenia. In a voting held earlier today, 61 lawmakers voted in favor of the privatization, while 22 voted against, and 16 abstained.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOut of the six parliamentary factions, &ldquo;Heritage,&rdquo; &ldquo;Rule of Law,&rdquo; &ldquo;Armenian National Congress,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Armenian Revolutionary Federation&rdquo; voted against the bill, while &ldquo;Prosperous Armenia&rdquo; abstained, and ruling&nbsp;&ldquo;Republican Party of Armenia&rdquo; voted in favor.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBefore voting had started, Zaruhi Postanjyan, head of opposition Heritage faction, urged the MPs to vote against the bill&nbsp;alienating &quot;Haypost.&quot; The new owner, according to the lawmaker, might consequently refuse to present activity reports to the National Assembly. As an example, she mentioned &ldquo;Electric Networks of Armenia&rdquo; national electric utility company (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2015\/06\/19\/electricity-rate-in-armenia-will-go-up-as-long-as-the-national-electric-utility-is-managed-ineffectively.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">owned by Russian Inter RAO UES<\/span><\/a>).\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;Rule of Law&rdquo; faction member Hovhannes Margaryan, in turn, stated that &ldquo;privatization of companies of strategic importance is inadmissible.&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tGagik Jhangiryan, member of &ldquo;Armenian National Congress,&rdquo; added that in addition to being strategically dangerous, the privatization of &quot;Haypost&quot;&nbsp;would lead to increase in postal rates.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tNote, in 2006 &ldquo;Haypost&rdquo; was handed over to the management of &ldquo;Haypost Trust Management,&rdquo; owned by Argentinean-Armenian businessman Eduardo Eurnekian. In 2012, the latter and the Armenian government signed a new agreement by which the parties extended the expiry date of the management agreement to December 1, 2016. &ldquo;Haypost&rdquo; is envisaged to be privatized by Eurnekian&#39;s company.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before voting had started, Zaruhi Postanjyan, Head of opposition Heritage faction, urged the MPs to vote against the bill alienating Haypost. The new owner, according to the lawmaker, might consequently refuse to&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":266034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20793,28168,61791,15144,61793,61792,17082],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}