Minister states plan to nationalize ENA preceded its owner's political statement.

YEREVAN, July 1. /ARKA/. The need to nationalize Armenia's power distributing company Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) was not prompted by a political statement made by its owner, Russia-based businessman Samvel Karapetyan, Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Minister David Khudatyan said in parliament on Tuesday.

"The Prime Minister of Armenia gave a written instruction to the Ministry and to me personally (regarding inspections at ENA) in May, and the political statement followed after that. In other words, the government decided to intervene in the ENA management in order to ensure qualitative changes,“ Khudatyan said during a discussion of amendments to the laws On Public Services Regulatory Authority and On Energy, designed to push through parliament in order to nationalize the facility.

As the minister explained, it turned out that the quality indicators of power supply, especially the number of outages, had been violated, after which it became clear that by the end of the year, ENA would be fined at least 12.5 billion drams.

ENA owner Samvel Karapetyan was arrested on June 19 on charges of publicly calling for the seizure of power. This happened after he expressed support for the Armenian Apostolic Church amid attacks against it by the Armenian authorities.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan then announced a plan to nationalize ENA, claiming that the process would be carried out in accordance with Armenian law.

According to him, there are known problems in Armenia's energy sector, including those related to quality. He believes that either there is deliberate sabotage or the system is technically incapable, so the process of transferring ENA to state control should be implemented quickly and efficiently.-0-