We Provide an Opportunity, and You Nostalgics Should Go Back and Recreate: Prime Minister

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated during the Q&A session in the National Assembly that he has often heard agitated conversations about how “the kolkhozes were destroyed.” He remarked, “We say that Stalin created them by force of arms; we provide an opportunity, and you nostalgics should go back and recreate.”

Speaking about the high cost of irrigation water, the Prime Minister emphasized that irrigation water is sold at 11 drams per cubic meter, yet its actual cost is two, three, or even four times higher. He noted that farmers are planting tomatoes on non-normative lands and irrigating five times without metering, resulting in the subsidization of tomato cultivation. “To put it bluntly, we spend water worth 1 million drams to yield tomatoes worth 200,000 drams for the farmers. The question is: is it not better to allocate that money differently?”

“In contrast, elsewhere people are saying: give us the cubic meter for 100 drams but don’t impose restrictions, just give us as much as we want. I propose transforming the policy of lamenting in the agricultural sector into a policy of understanding the situation and moving forward with strategic steps,” Pashinyan said.