YEREVAN. – Prime Minister of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan stated, at Thursday’s Cabinet session, that it was impossible not to raise the price of electricity in the country, and he gave three respective reasons.

“The first reason was the lack of water [resources] in recent years. The electricity produced by our hydroelectric plants is much cheaper than the output of the thermal [power] plants.

“The second reason was the unplanned 88-day stoppage of the turbine of the [country’s] nuclear [power] plant, in December 2013. Again, it was replaced by the about-six-and-a-half-times-more-expensive electricity produced by the thermal plant; this also brought in additional expenses.

“[And] the third main reason is the [Armenian] national currency’s around-20-percent devaluation in the past three years. Naturally, this also affected the cost price of the produced electricity.

“So, no matter how unwanted it is to record, the [energy] system [of Armenia] has losses that are due to objective factors.

“[And] if the noted losses are not recompensed (…), we will have a chain reaction that will have irreversible consequences on the economy [of Armenia]. The regular power outages, which today are seemingly in the past, will very quickly become routine.

“[But] the government will allocate more than 2.5 billion drams [approx. US$5,256,348], annually, to lessen, for the socially disadvantaged class, the consequences of the [electricity] price hike,” Abrahamyan specifically stated.