What Are You Spending On That You Don't Have Enough Money for Transport? - Hayk Marutyan

The City Hall has announced that it is unable to acquire new transportation vehicles because it cannot collect sufficient funds from ticket sales. In other words, the responsibility for the failure of the transportation reform seems to be placed on "irresponsible passengers" and the "malicious opposition" organizing the boycott.

This was stated by the former Mayor of Yerevan, Hayk Marutyan, on his Facebook page.

“First of all, when we initiated the fight against fare increases, we said that detailed calculations were necessary to understand both people’s purchasing power and the potential impact of price increases on the development of transportation. Today’s situation proves that we were right; the City Hall does not have proper calculations to justify the increase. During a debate with Avinyan, I asked and did not receive an answer, so I am asking again: if you are collecting so much money by raising taxes, what are you spending it on that there is not enough for transportation? You said the ‘boycott failed,’ so why are you complaining about lower revenue?” the former mayor wrote.

It should be noted that there have been lower revenues as a result of protests against transportation fares. Yerevan Mayor’s spokesperson Hayk Kostanyan has confirmed this. The non-payments have led to certain budget issues. Furthermore, the City Hall is not planning to cut funds from other sectors, hypothetically from public education, to invest in public transportation.