City Hall's Purchased Bus is $22,845 More Expensive than Previous Contract, Arakelyan

Yerevan City Hall purchased 161 Chinese Zhongtong buses of model LCK6860HGN from "Zhongtong Bus" company in 2021, signing a contract on April 20, 2021, with a price of 44,720,000 AMD per bus. This was stated by Mesrop Arakelyan, co-founder of the "Living Country" party, on his Facebook page.

“The same company sold 150 buses of the same model in 2022, signing a contract on August 22, 2022, with a price of 44,249,499 AMD per bus. The two contracts are almost identical, containing the same main technical specifications for the buses. At first glance, there appears to be no issue, and in fact, they are purchased 470,000 AMD cheaper the second time. However, the following detail is noteworthy. It is clear that China sells the buses in US dollars or Chinese yuan, but never in Armenian drams. In other words, the Armenian dram has not been transferred to China.

Additionally, the 2021 contract includes a bank guarantee issued by the Chinese side in US dollars, where the price per bus is set at $86,289, calculated at an exchange rate of 518.26 AMD per dollar. The exchange rate on August 22, 2022, was 405.46 AMD per dollar.

This means that the price of a bus at the time of signing the second contract was $109,134, which is $22,845 higher than the price per bus stated in the April 20, 2021 contract.

Of course, I am not inclined to believe that at least $3,426,750 has been embezzled by municipal officials, for example, transferring it to accounts in the UAE, but all this, to put it mildly, is at least inefficient management of state or community funds, if not outright waste, which is a criminal offense.

Another possibility remains: for some unknown reason, the Chinese side sold the city hall buses at around $3,500,000 more expensive. I urge law enforcement agencies and journalists to pay attention to the apparent damages amounting to about 1.4 billion AMD to the budget of Armenia or Yerevan,” wrote Arakelyan.