City Hall Has Not Been Funded to Extend the Metro to Republic Hospital: Ruslan Baghdasaryan

Ruslan Baghdasaryan, the former head of the Davtashen administrative district of Yerevan, made a post on his Facebook page regarding the construction of a new metro station and directed a question to the mayor.

The full text of the post is as follows:

“Dear residents of Yerevan, I want to share some information with you and ask the mayor a question: Is it correct? And so, there is information that the city council has approached the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to finance the construction of new metro stations.

The calculations are as follows: if the metro is to be extended near Tumanyan, the project cost amounts to about $90 million, as a significant portion of that section was constructed decades ago. And only about 3,000 people would benefit from this project daily, which is not optimal for such an investment.

However, if the metro is extended to the vicinity of the Republic Hospital, passenger traffic would reach up to 10-15 thousand; yet, this would require nearly $300 million. Another issue is that this investment would only create approximately 50 jobs, which will also become an inefficient expenditure.

More importantly, the EBRD has not allocated funds to Yerevan. Theoretically, the EBRD could loan money to the Armenian government for this project, but even then, it would change the state debt/GDP ratio, while the government could invest in more critical areas and gain greater benefits.

P.S. Dear residents of Yerevan, the purpose of my detailed and professional remarks is to ensure that if the city council confirms this information, you should be aware. And I can confidently state that this mayor has lied to you; the metro station will not be constructed.”