YEREVAN. - The promises of Robert Nazaryan, Head of Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC), remind the famous idiom about the pie in the sky.

During the debates in the Armenian parliament last Friday, Mr Nzaryan ‘didn’t exclude’ the lowering of the electricity tariff by 5 AMD exactly in a year.

Of course, the Commission Head was careful to secure himself by laying down a number of conditions for materializing such an unseen miracle. Among the conditions is, for instance, the absence of hikes in the dollar rate in Armenia during a year.

The application of the Electric Networks of Armenia CJSC (ENA) lacked the precise justification for the tariff hike, whereas in their statements the officials voice the objective ‘factors,’ which allegedly resulted in the ENA debts.

Consequently, ENA had to buy power from other stations, specifically from Hrazdan HPP, whose selling price is quite high. But why is Hrazdan HPP’s electricity price high?

According to the statistics for January-September of the last year, Hrazdan HPP supplied energy for 24,1 billion AMD, for which it purchased natural gas of about 19,0 billion AMD.

The correlation between the fuel price and supply indicator is about 80 per cent.

However, Hrazdan HPP does not remain at a loss. In fact, both the Hrazdan HPP and ENA are subsidiaries of the Russian Joint Stock Company Inter RAO UES. According to the statistics for January-September, the HPP’s net profit for one share constituted a little less than 1,1 thousand AMD. And Inter RAO UES, which gets dividends from part of the net profit, has about 1,6 million of such shares. It’s clear that in the conditions of the colossal profiteering there can be no pie even in the sky.