Avinyan Can Purchase Promised Trolleybuses for Yerevan with Collected Funds, but It Is Not Happening: 'Zhoghovurd'

In 2024, the actual revenues of Yerevan's budget amounted to 116.715 billion AMD, or 103.1% of the actual performance against budget planning. The own revenues were collected at 113.1%, meaning that the Yerevan municipality collected 13.1% more, totaling 71.199 billion AMD,” announced Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan during the budget discussions in the National Assembly on June 11, 2025.

The newspaper 'Zhoghovurd' examined Tigran Avinyan's actual commitments and noted that at the beginning of 2025, the city authorities promised to purchase 45 trolleybuses for the capital. However, months after the announcement, it was stated that it would not be possible to acquire the entire number of trolleybuses. The reason being that there were shortfalls due to a boycott against rising transportation costs. Even a law was changed to penalize citizens participating in that boycott… In short, there is no money in the city transport budget.

According to the data from January to May 2025, ticket sales in Yerevan reached 6.028 billion AMD. This means that over 1 billion AMD has been collected from citizens each month, typically at 150 AMD per ticket. So, what is the cost of one trolleybus? Different estimates suggest it is around 95-96 million AMD. Therefore, Tigran Avinyan can indeed purchase the promised trolleybuses with the collected funds and even more; the total collected 6.28 billion AMD could buy 65 trolleybuses instead of just 45. However, it is not being done.

Instead, extravagant expenses are being made to satisfy Tigran Avinyan’s ambitions. When he took office as mayor in October 2023, the citizens of Yerevan paid 87 million AMD or about 220 thousand USD for Tigran Avinyan to be sworn in as mayor.

The newspaper inquired with the press secretary of Yerevan's mayor about why Tigran Avinyan is not fulfilling his promise and why the promised 45 trolleybuses have not been purchased for Yerevan. The response from the municipality was: “The competition for the 45 has taken place, there is a winning organization, we just need to resolve the financial issues to ensure we can have all 45 this year.”