After a warning from the Russian Railways company, the Prime Minister of Armenia stated that the termination of the concession agreement is unacceptable for Yerevan. Moscow has indicated that if the agreement is terminated, Armenia must return all investments made since 2008. Nikol Pashinyan now prefers to resolve the issue in a friendly atmosphere, although just two weeks ago he hinted at some decisions and expressed readiness to go to arbitration:
“The friendly option is for our Russian partners to sell the concession rights to a third party at a normal market price. Moreover, there are experts who are already providing pricing, indicating what it could objectively be worth, which is quite a substantial amount, considering the current circumstances. Now we are looking at this option, this option, and we feel that it might not be so comfortable for Russia,” Pashinyan said.
This is the first time Prime Minister Pashinyan has spoken about transferring the railway management concession to another country in about six months. Moscow sharply rejected this proposal, deeming it unacceptable. Just two weeks ago, the Russian side warned that in the event of termination of the agreement or transfer of management to another country, they would demand the return of investments made over 18 years, amounting to about $400 million.
Today, Nikol Pashinyan is listing new solutions for railway management that, according to him, could be beneficial for all parties. “Then we look and say, is there an option that partially solves their problem, partially solves our problem? That there should be a model, for example, that some share remains, some share is sold, but so that the minority share remains, because otherwise the problem will not be solved. Another idea is that the license may be divided into two parts, now the railway and the infrastructure, and the use of infrastructure is a package,” he added.
There has been no response yet from Moscow regarding the Prime Minister's new idea:
