YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, NOYAN TAPAN. "It would be incomprehensible for our people if the Armenian-Russian strategic relations did not transform into other relations, and it would be incomperehensible for us as well," Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan stated at the September 23 meeting with the members of the ArmRusgazprom CJSC Board. In his words, the signing of the 2009-2015 agreement on natural gas supply completely fits into the logic of Sargsyan-Medvedev negotiations. He said that the tariffs to be used from April 1, 2009, will allow Armenia to increase slightly the social load and will also provide business with a great opportunity to become much more competitive in the region. "Despite the size of our transport component - as compared with others, this circumstance gives an opportunity to be in much better conditions: to ensure quite high indices of GDP in the visible future," the president noted. According to him, it is necessary to find the golden mean so that on the one hand the enterprise's business will be successful, on the other hand its business will not be aggravating for the economy and population. "It is good that we have succeeded in raising the gas supply network index from 21% to 91% over a few years, but we also have many settlements where residents cannot use natural gas and improve the quality of their life because it is economically unprofitable for the enterprise to build gas supply networks in these settlements," the president said, adding that some opportunities of state assistance exist in this issue, and the major goal is to construct a gas supply network throughout Armenia in the next 2-3 years, and there will be a possibility to finance this work both from the state budget and other sources. S. Sargsyan attached great importance to the highly professional operation of the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline. In his words, this work must be done within the envisaged period so that the launching of the pipeline will be in line with the completion of construction of the Hrazdan Thermal Power Plant's 5th unit and its operation - for successful management of the economy. The Armenian president said that the calculation of technical and economic indices of the new nuclear power plant has begun. "We believe that we are starting the construction of a powerful unit with a capacity of 1,000-1,200 megawatts. In my opinion, it will change the security quality of our country," the president stated.

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